No writer today is as skilled at playing with perspectives and characters as Cusk. In her successful trilogy Outline /Transit /Kudos, we become acquainted with protagonist Faye via stories about the people around her: a limitless variety of narratives that laughs in the face of the idea that there is one single reality. Cust writes about what we tell ourselves about our lives, how other people see those lives, and how that causes identities to shift. Her latest book, Parade, is as unmanageable as it is brilliant. She goes another step further to make all of her characters just as fluid. People’s names change, lives and works of art turn upside-down, and no one is who they seem at first.

What is Cusk searching for this time? Identity, interaction, evasion or interchangeability? Find out at her Book Talk on 26 September.

Beforehand, Maxim Februari will give a laudation for Rachel Cusk.