About this talk

Join Professor Elleke Boehmer, who will discuss her two new books, Ice Shock (2026) and Southern Imagining (2026), in conversation with Professor Dame Hermione Lee. Together, these works ask how we keep distant people and places in mind—and why that act of attention matters. Described by The New Yorker as ‘a lyrical study of global literature’, in Southern Imagining, Boehmer challenges the dominance of northern perspectives by exploring how the world looks when viewed from the far south. Drawing on literary and scientific writing—from early Indigenous knowledge systems to figures such as Jorge Luis Borges and Katherine Mansfield—she asks what it means to inhabit the southern hemisphere imaginatively and how reading might reshape our sense of the planet and our place within it. How do we imagine and remain connected to distant lives and environments, and what does it mean to write across such distances—geographical, emotional, and planetary? Her novel Ice Shock turns to intimacy at a different scale. Set against the backdrop of melting ice caps, it follows two young lovers separated across the planet—one at an Antarctic research station, the other in England—as they navigate distance, climate crisis, and the fragility of connection. As Jason Allen-Paisant writes, Ice Shock is ‘a propulsive and eerie love story […] beneath surfaces that shift constantly like the melting ice floes of the characters’ worlds’. How might literature reshape our sense of proximity, belonging, and care in a rapidly changing world? Spanning life-writing, fiction, and environmental thought, this conversation will appeal to anyone interested in how literature can reshape our sense of distance, place, and belonging in a changing world. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of postcolonial and world literatures. No prior specialist knowledge or preparation is required.

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