The Matchbox Girl: Alice Jolly in Conversation with Rosie Goldsmith
March 17 | 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
We are thrilled to welcome prize-winning novelist Alice Jolly, author of The Matchbox Girl, in conversation with award-winning journalist Rosie Goldsmith.
Set in 1930’s Vienna, The Matchbox Girl brilliantly brings neurodiversity to light.
Join us for a conversation offering insight into the story of a young non-verbal girl’s battle for survival and search for the truth.
About The Matchbox Girl
Adelheid Brunner does not speak. She writes and draws instead and her ambition is to own one thousand matchboxes. Her grandmother cannot make sense of this, but Adelheid will stop at nothing to achieve her dream. She makes herself invisible, hiding in cupboards with her pet rat, Franz Joseph, listening in on conversations she can’t fully comprehend. Then she meets Dr Asperger, a man who lets children play all day and who recognises the importance of matchboxes. He invites Adelheid to come and live at the Vienna paediatric clinic, where she and other children like herself will live under observation. But the year is 1938 and the place is Vienna – a city of political instability, a place of increasing fear and violence. When the Nazis march into the city, a new world is created and difficult choices must be made. Why are the clinic’s children disappearing, and where do they go? Adelheid starts to suspect that some of Dr Asperger’s games are played for the highest stakes. In order to survive, she must play a game whose rules she cannot yet understand.
Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright. Her writing has been awarded the PEN/Ackerley Prize, an O Henry Prize and the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, and been longlisted for Ondaatje Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. She teaches on the Creative Writing Masters at Oxford University.
Rosie Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist and presenter, specializing in arts and foreign affairs. As a BBC broadcaster for twenty years, she travelled the world. Today she combines journalism with presenting and curating cultural and literary events. As well as being Director of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter magazine, Rosie is also the Artistic Director of the European Writers’ Festival in the UK, a books podcaster and book prize judge.
