Caught by The River presents Joe Dunthorne, Rowe Irvin + Tom Bolton

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Caught by The River presents Joe Dunthorne, Tom Bolton + Rowe Irvin (1100 at Real Magic Books)

We are delighted to be joined by the wonderful Caught by the River and some very special guests.

Joe Dunthorne is the author of books including Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. Children of Radium, published by Hamish Hamilton in April, is his first work of non-fiction.

Joe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried: an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste and a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home.

The only problem was that Siegfried had already written the book of his life – an unpublished, two-thousand page memoir so dry and rambling that none of his living descendants had managed to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally read the manuscript himself, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew…

Thus begins a mystery which stretches across the twentieth century and around the world, from Berlin to Ankara, New York, Glasgow and eventually London – a mystery about the production of something much more sinister than toothpaste. On the trail of one ‘jolly grandpa’ with a patchy psychiatric history and an encyclopaedic knowledge of poison gases, Joe Dunthorne is forced to confront the uncomfortable questions that lie at the heart of every family. Can we ever understand where we come from? Is every family in the end a work of fiction? And even if the truth can be found – will we be able to live with it?

Tom Bolton has published five books: London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide Volumes 1 and 2 (Strange Attractor), Vanished City (Strange Attractor), Camden Town: Dreams of Another London, and Low Country (shortlisted for the New Angles Prize). He works in architecture and urban design, and has a PhD on London’s railway terminals. He also writes on theater and music for publications including Plays International and The Quietus. Soon to be published by Strange Attractor, Tom's next book Atomic Albion is a journey around Britain's nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex marshes to the Anglesey coast, from the Dungeness shingle to the far north of Scotland, Tom Bolton explores how nuclear sites shape the places around them, and enters the impossible world of nuclear power and weapons.

Here, we bring Joe, Tom and their latest books into a conversation sure to emit a radioactive glow.

Rowe Irvin is a writer and artist. Her work has appeared in Prototype 5, Unquiet Slumbers: A Collection of Folk Horror Tales (Nepenthé Press) and The Stinging Fly. She was awarded second prize in the 2024 Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award. Her hotly anticipated debut novel, Life Cycle of a Moth, will be published on the 5th June 2025 by Canongate.

Maya and Daughter live in complete isolation in a secluded woodland, their days aligned with the light and changing seasons, a complex pattern of routine and ritual. Daughter has never questioned the life her mother has chosen for them; the life that has meant she's never met another soul, or known anywhere except their forest home.

 But one day, when Daughter is almost sixteen, a red-haired stranger steps into the confines of their territory. Where there was always two, suddenly there are three - and the carefully constructed world that Maya has built to keep her daughter safe may not survive it.

 Urgent, haunting and thrillingly alive, Life Cycle of a Moth explores both the tenderness and ferocity of maternal love, asking what we might find ourselves capable of - and willing to sacrifice - in order to shelter those we hold dear.

Caught by the River was founded in May 2007 as an online space to write and read about offline pursuits. It publishes stories about arts, nature & culture at caughtbytheriver.net, as well as nurturing various offshoots — including gigs, festival stages, print media and the Rivertones record label.