Tahmima Anam & Erica Wagner | Truth, Courage and Fiction
Sun 22 Nov 2026 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm
How do we find the courage to step out of the life that others have shaped for us and walk our own path? Two friends discuss their extraordinary novels based on true stories to shine a light for us on this question. Tahmima Anam’s Uprising is a blistering yet captivating novel set amongst sex workers on an isolated island – inspired by the real women of Banishanta, Bangladesh. In her romantic and evocative Wash, Erica Wagner draws an intimate portrait of Washington Roebling, architect of the Brooklyn Bridge. Courage and goodness can find a way.
Venue: Cambridge Union Library
Duration: 1 hour
Uprising is a 2026 Orwell Foundation Political Fiction Prize Finalist
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Author Biographies
Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. Her short story ‘Garments’ was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She is named to Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London.
Erica Wagner‘s books include Gravity, Seizure, Ariel’s Gift and Chief Engineer, winner of the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award. She is the editor of First Light, a celebration of the work of Alan Garner. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023 and in 2025 was awarded a Public Humanities Fellowship by the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
