Raw Reading Club is a new study group. Each month, we will read a short classic work of about 100 pages. You’ll be given suggestions for what to look out for, and questions to prompt your own responses in good time for the monthly meetings. These will be seminars in which we share our thoughts and consider key aspects of literature: themes, style, narrative techniques, interpretation and more. There will be suggestions on further reading to follow up on the set texts.

Through the course, you will exercise your powers of close reading and meet some seriously brilliant writing from different times and cultures. The classics are for everyone. Join us to take your enjoyment of literature to new levels!

Wed 04 Feb | 2pm – 4pm | Workshop

Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis. ‘After a night of troubling dreams, Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into a giant beetle’. With one of the most famous first sentences in literature, Kafka’s eerie masterpiece grabs you and doesn’t let go. But what is this story getting at? Is it an allegory, a fable, or simply a nightmare? Plenty to discuss here about stories and where they take us.

Wed 04 Mar | 2pm – 4pm | Meeting Room

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. ‘The horror, the horror…’ Conrad was one of the great novelists of the earlier twentieth century, and this short masterpiece is an examination of colonialism told in his typical rich, mesmerising style.

Wed 01 Apr | 2pm – 4pm | Meeting Room

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop. Florence Green decides to open a bookshop in a small town. What could be more charming? But not everyone wants a bookshop or approves of the books she wants to sell. A timeless gem describing what happens when someone shakes up a community set in its ways. A comic and moving novel which reaches deep into human behaviour with Fitzgerald’s brilliantly economic style.

Wed 06 May | 2pm – 4pm | Workshop

Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains. Miloš Hama is a young railroad apprentice in wartime Czechoslovakia. But he has other things on his mind besides the war – losing his virginity, gossip at the railway station… A touching and humorous portrait of a sympathetic character by a Czech master.

Wed 03 Jun | 2pm – 4pm | Meeting Room

Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These. Keegan’s novella about the infamous Magdalen laundries and the capacity of an ordinary person for heroism is becoming a Christmas classic alongside Dickens. In a short space, we are taken to a vividly memorable world where we witness the heights and depths of human nature.

About The Tutors

Malcolm Hebron has a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford and for many years taught at Winchester College. Over that time, he published books on medieval and renaissance writing, literature and linguistics and wrote a guide on how to read poetry. Malcolm is a Fellow of the English Association, and as an editor of a journal, he has worked with critics and poets, helping them prepare work for publication.

Venue: Exeter Phoenix

*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>