Sydney Writers Festival – Peter & Georgina Godwin on exile and family

Next date: Wednesday, 21 May 2025 | 06:30 PM to 07:30 PM

Sydney-Writers-Festival-Peter-and-Georgina-Godwin

Peter's mother is dying on a hospital bed in a London apartment. Born in England and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, her accent overnight has become posher than the Queen's. Unsentimental, fiercely stubborn and at times hilarious, she finally drops her guard, losing all fear of conflict to become the family provocateur.

While confronting the revelations of what his family was and wasn't, Peter also mourns the ending of his long marriage. He reflects on his family's legacy of exile and their tenuous hold on home.

Peter Godwin was born and raised in Zimbabwe. In his latest book Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, he considers the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, while grieving the many losses that make life magnificent and unbearable. He brings us into the spaces which make us question, suffer and celebrate the relationships we have among family and friends, and the healing of our own wounds.

Peter is the author of six non-fiction books including Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell Prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, which won the Borders Original Voices Award. His book The Fear was selected by the New Yorker as a best book of the year.

He will be interviewed by his sister Georgina Godwin, who is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a distinguished broadcast journalist.