American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis joins the most dangerous philosopher in the west to headline Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival 2010

Thursday 1 – Sunday 18 July 2010, Southbank Centre

Slavoj Žižek, ‘the Elvis of cultural theory’, will launch an assault of capitalism in the heart of the world’s financial centre at the London Literature Festival this July. Also headlining at the Festival will be cult novelist Bret Easton Ellis, launching his latest novel, a sequel to his best selling debut of 25 years ago. 

Žižek’s timely appearance at London Literature Festival will mark the publication of his new book, Living in the End Times, in which he conducts a major new analysis of our global situation, from the point of view that global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis and exploring the consequences of this.

Cult novelist Bret Easton Ellis, whose murderous yuppie Patrick Bateman epitomised the affluent 80s Wall Street era, will also launch his new book, Imperial Bedrooms at the London Literature Festival. Ellis returns to the characters in his bestselling debut Less Than Zero, twenty-five years on with Clay and his friends facing middle age and a nostalgia for the last 25 years.

This year’s Festival celebrates the wealth of Brazilian literary talent, in a special strand of programming, ‘Brazilian Words’, which forms part of Southbank Centre’s three month long Festival Brazil, sponsored by HSBC. The programme includes legendary footballer Sócrates discussing football and Brazil and a performance by cult poet and musician Arnaldo Antunes.

London Literature Festival 2010 highlights include:

·    John Cooper Clarke, the original punk poet, does his first solo show in over a decade
·    An E4 Udderbelly event with graphic novelists Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá
·    Jeanette Winterson gives this year’s Southbank Centre Lecture to mark the 25th anniversary of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
·    Marcus du Sautoy lectures on the Maths of Music (part of celebrations to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society)
·    American novelist Barbara Kingsolver reads from her latest novel, The Lacuna
·    Groundbreaking Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, who is about to take the literary world by storm with her book Mornings in Jenin
·    Alexei Sayle gives an exclusive, pre-publication preview of his memoir Stalin Ate My Homework
·    Sylvie Earle, 75 year old oceanographer and Time magazine’s ‘first hero of the planet’ discusses her adventures at sea
·    Andrea Levy reads from and discusses her new novel The Long Song, which tackles the slave trade
·    Gare St. Lazare Players perform classic American novel Moby Dick
·    Dramatized readings based on Lyndall Gordon’s biography of poet Emily Dickinson
·    Gary Younge launches his new book Who Are We?: Should it Matter in the Twenty-First Century
·    Premiere of a staged adaptation of Tahmima Anam’s novel A Golden Age, about the 1971 war of independence in Bangladesh
·    Su Tong, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize 2009, discusses his novel The Boat to Redemption
·    Outdoor student performance of Dante’s Inferno in Southbank Centre’s famous riverside setting

London Literature Festival is the highlight of Southbank Centre’s unrivalled year-round literature and spoken word programme, and an essential date in the city’s cultural diary. The 21-acre site will be full of performances, book groups and workshops, with graphic artists, youth programmes and bloggers projecting the Festival to London and beyond. Alongside this mix of bestselling novelists, punk poetry and debate, the Festival includes special programmes of events on Science and Arts as part of Royal Society’s See Further celebrations, Brazilian Words as part of Festival Brazil and Classic Stories, to whet Londoner’s appetites for a summer of reading.

The full programme for London Literature Festival can be found online and bookings can be made from Friday 14 May via: www.southbankcentre.co.uk  or Tel: 0870 160 2522.


For information regarding Southbank Centre, contact Miles Evans, Contemporary Press Manager at Southbank Centre on 020 7921 0917 or miles.evans@southbankcentre.co.uk