We could not be more thrilled to be hosting the launch event for Hot Stew, the highly-anticipated second novel from Fiona Mozley, the Booker-shortlisted author of Elmet.

Pungent, steamy, insatiable Soho; the only part of London that truly never sleeps. Tourists dawdling, chancers skulking, addicts shuffling, sex workers strutting, punters prowling, businessmen striding, the homeless and the lost. Down Wardour Street, ducking onto Dean Street, sweeping into L’Escargot, darting down quiet back alleyways, skirting dumpsters and drunks, emerging on to raucous main roads, fizzing with energy and riotous with life.

On a corner, sits a large townhouse, the same as all its neighbours. But this building hosts a teeming throng of rich and poor, full from the basement right up to the roof terrace. Precious and Tabitha call the top floors their home but it’s under threat; its billionaire-owner Agatha wants to kick the women out to build expensive restaurants and luxury flats. Men like Robert, who visit the brothel, will have to go elsewhere. Those like Cheryl, who sleep in the basement, will have to find somewhere else to hide after dark. But the women won’t go quietly. Soho is their turf and they are ready for a fight.

Hot Stew is Fiona Mozley’s second novel. Her debut, Elmet, won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Polari Prize. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dublin Literary Award and the International Dylan Thomas Prize.

The author will be in conversation with writer Alice Tarbuck, author of A Spell in the Wild: A Year (and six centuries) of Magic. The event will take place online with both Fiona and Alice joining us from their homes via Crowdcast.

The ticket price includes a signed and dedicated copy of Hot Stew. Fiona will be signing the books in advance of the event; they will be posted out in the following days.

Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley