A woman arrives in Geneva, the first stop in a train journey through the country of her father's birth. She yearns to be outside time - untethered and alone - but she soon becomes immersed in the stories resonating all around her. She visits a museum and stares into the oversized, discoball eyes of an insect, unsettled by the intimacy, 'like looking into the facial pores of a lover'. Later, she will tiptoe through the snow to find a portrait of James Baldwin on the window shutter of a chalet, his features rendered in rows of silver staples shot into timber. She will find traces of Mary Shelley and Fleur Jaeggy; android pioneers in eighteenth-century Neuchâtel; Charlie Chaplin, Patricia Highsmith, and striking workers drilling through the earth to create the vast Gotthard Tunnel; Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary as they summit Everest; Lenin and the Dada artists in early twentiethcentury Zurich.

On Not Climbing Mountains is a tender and compelling novel from the internationally acclaimed author of The Performance. Beautifully conceived and deftly crafted, it is an exhilarating feat of storytelling, concerned with the fragilities of the natural world, the pains of grief and memory, and the endless reverberations of art. 

Tickets are $12 or you can purchase Ticket + Signed Book for $33 (On Not Climbing Mountains is normally $33 RRP) with the book to be collected at the event. A glass of SC Pannell wine is included in the ticket. On Not Climbing Mountains will also be on sale for the night for $33. If you are unable to attend on the night, there is also a Book Only (signed) option available for $33 for SA addresses (signed book will be posted after the event).

Don't miss this opportunity to hear two writers chatting books, reading, historical figures and Switzerland.