In Ascension : Uncovered with Martin MacInnes

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Martin MacInnes on In Ascension - his Booker Prize Longlisted novel.

This will be a deep dive - asking questions on everything, all the way to the end, so we strongly recommend that you have read the book.

Free entry with purchase of the book - the paperback will be ready for collection from the shop 1-2 days after ticket purchase.

BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Mesmerising' Sunday Times

'Magnificent' Guardian

'Utterly compelling' The Times, Books of the Year

'Profound and thrilling' New Statesman, Books of the Year

'A far-reaching epic' Financial Times, Books of the Year

In Ascension

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings. Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.