Hear Leila Aboulela read from and discuss her new novel The Kindness of Enemies.

Aboulela has won a Scottish Book Award and the Caine Prize, and has been longlisted for the Orange Prize three times. At this intimate event, you can meet her in person.

Moving between present-day Scotland and the court of the Tsar,The Kindness of Enemies is a story of love and betrayal, reconciliation and war.

Natasha, our protagonist, is researching the life of Imam Shamil, a 19th-century warrior who battled to defend the wild mountains of the Caucasus against Russian invasion. But as Natasha uncovers more, the exercise rapidly moves beyond the academic realm and becomes perilously real.

About Africa Utopia

In 2012 Southbank Centre launched Africa Utopia, a festival dedicated to bringing art and ideas from Africa and the African diaspora to audiences in the UK. We ask what the West can learn from this rapidly changing continent.

The festival’s first four years have featured the award-winning Senegalese musician and human-rights activist Baaba Maal, afrobeat legend Tony Allen, former First Lady of Somaliland and hospital founder Edna Adan, Kenyan creative collective The Nest, Township Tech originator Spoek Mathambo, ‘godfather of Ethiopian jazz’ Mulatu Astatke and the Kinshasa Symphony orchestra.