OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Join us on Friday, the 24th of January at 5PM, for a discussion with Tbilisi born, UK raised writer Leo Vardiashvili on his debut novel ‘Hard by a Great Forest.’ The event will take place in the Pavilion Room at St Antony’s College and will be followed by a reception.
Leo Vardiashvili, an Observer best new novelist for 2024, came to the UK as a refugee aged twelve, after fleeing civil war-torn Georgia. Hard by a Great Forest is his much lauded first novel, published in 2024.
The novel’s narrator Saba, like Vardiashvili, fled Georgia as a child, and returns, two decades later, to a surreal, flooded Tbilisi with escaped zoo animals roaming the streets. Searching for his disappeared father and brother, Saba follows a trail of cryptic clues, determined to put the past to rest.
