Amanda Craig 'Hearts and Minds' talks and signings in May

Amanda Craig, author of Hearts and Minds - published on 30 April by Little, Brown and described by Penny Perrick in the Sunday Times as "rich, Dickensian" - is giving talks at the following venues during the month of May:

Monday 11 May at 8.00 p.m. at Stoke Newington Bookshop, 150 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 0NY. Tickets cost £2.50 including wine. Contact: Sarah Graham on 020-7249 2808

Friday 15 May at 4.00 p.m. at the Daphne du Maurier Festival, du Maurier Theatre, Festival Village, Fowey. Contact the Box Office on 0845 094 0428 for tickets at £6.50.

Monday 18 May at 7.00 p.m. at the Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival, Carnegie Library, 188 Herne Hill Road, London SE24 0AG. Call the Box office for free tickets: 020-7926 1075 / readersandwriters@lambeth.gov.uk

Friday 22 May at 6.00 p.m. at Chalk Farm Library, Sharpleshall Street, London NW1 8YN. There are no tickets, the event is open the general public. For further information contact Samier Abousaada on 020-7974 6526 or visit www.whatson.camden.gov.uk.

Hearts and Minds is a thoroughly engaging novel which explores themes of immigration, displacement and human connection in 21st century London.

Amanda Craig ventures into the nether-world of five strangers whose lives will connect with the murder of a woman on Hampstead Heath. There is Job, the mini-cab driver from Zimbabwe; Ian, the supply teacher in exile from South Africa; Katie from New York, jilted, impoverished and miserable, working at The Rambler, a political magazine; and fifteen-year-old Anna, trafficked into sexual slavery. Even Polly Noble, an overworked immigration lawyer and a descendent of Jewish refugees, knows how easy it is to fall between the cracks.

When her au pair disappears overnight, Polly hardly imagines that her own needs and beliefs have dragged her family into a world of danger, deceit and terror, which will threaten not only her home, but London itself.

When Amanda Craig began writing Hearts and Minds over six years ago, she noted how many people in her daily life were immigrants. The man who swept the streets, the waitresses in the local café, the dry cleaner, the firm of mini-cab drivers, builders - all were legal or illegal immigrants. This also set her wondering how they adapted to life in London; how had they arrived; were they homesick, happy, enterprising or despondent?

Following a period in hospital, where Amanda was nursed by women from all over the world, she was for a time, wholly dependent on a succession of au pairs from Eastern Europe. These women had fascinating stories to tell of war, ambition, misery or triumph over adversity. She also encountered au pairs on the run from people like the two Russian pimps in her novel.

Her curiosity led her to interview teenage prostitutes, mini-cab drivers, teachers, policemen, human rights lawyers, expert witnesses, doctors, torture victims and so on. Gradually, her five main characters emerged as distinct personalities, meeting and parting, glimpsing each other and eventually saving each other’s lives.

The most important story of in the novel to Amanda, is that of Anna. Through charities such as Women for Women, which helps the survivors of war rebuild their lives, she has met a number of women who were raped, trafficked and prostituted. It’s also not difficult to find young prostitutes and addicts around King’s Cross and St Pancras, and if they are paid enough for their time, they will speak about their work.

During the writing real life caught up with the story. A few months after she had written a chapter describing a burglary at Polly’s home, an actual burglary occurred in her own house. Amanda and her husband had a terrifying encounter with a young thug one Sunday afternoon in order to prevent him from stealing her laptop (containing Hearts and Minds). They were lucky that neither they, nor their son, were knifed in the process, because he turned out to be well known to the police, and it was partly because they fought back, that they were able to catch and imprison him.

Rosalie Macfarlane

Posted 01/05/2009 16:03:23 by Darren Turpin with 0 comments.