The two award-winning authors have much in common: both made a name with their prose debuts set at a time when difference was not tolerated and same-sex relationships had to be hidden from society. Marek Torčík’s autobiographical Rozložíš paměť [Memory Burn] looks back at his younger self, a bullied sensitive teenager who breaks several taboos, including being close to a Romany schoolmate. His vivid and painful reconstruction of growing up in a small industrial town resonates thematically and stylistically with Shapland’s A Room Above a Shop, a gentle love story of two men living in the conservative environment of provincial south Wales in the 1980s at the height of the HIV pandemic and anti-LGBT legislation of the Thatcher era.

Marek Torčík, Anthony Shapland. Moderation: Alexandra Büchler