Meet Shumona Sinha and Maylis de Kerangal in a conversation about their newly translated short novels, Down with the Poor! and Eastbound.

First published in France in 2011, both books centre around a confrontation between a man and a woman. One on the Trans-Siberian railway, between a Russian conscript and an older French passenger, the other between an asylum seeker and a court interpreter, on the Paris metro.

Joined by translator & author Lauren Elkin and Russel Williams, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature (American University of Paris), they will discuss states of confinement and State violence, freedom of movement and freedom of speech, identification (or not) with the Other (with or without a common language), and the role of literature in revealing boundaries as grey areas.