Philosophical Fiction Book Club

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet. There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

Moving on from 2025's theme of 'Crisis', our theme for 2026 will be 'Quest'. The year will take us through Homer's Odyssey and culminate with Moby-Dick, but we will kick off the journey with Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea.

Published in 1968, this is not your average children's book. Drawing deeply from both Western and Eastern ideas of the myth, quest and philosophy, the story follows Ged as he experiences both the joy and awful weight of magic on his journey to become the Wizard, Sparrowhawk.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

Ged was the greatest wizard in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B. this meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are not able to attend in person for any other reason.

Continuing our 2026 theme of 'Quest', we move from the bildungsroman of A Wizard of Earthsea in January to the story of a fisherman in the twilight of his life for February - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Depending on your perspective, this book is either the culmination of Hemingway's genius or basically the same as his other works, but with a fish... Written near the end of his career, it was the only one of his works explicitly named when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Decide what you think yourself, and come join our discussion as we explore its themes of struggle, failure, determination, pride and our place in nature.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet. There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

Continuing our 2026 theme of 'Quest', we move from the bildungsroman of A Wizard of Earthsea in January to the story of a fisherman in the twilight of his life for February - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Depending on your perspective, this book is either the culmination of Hemingway's genius or basically the same as his other works, but with a fish... Written near the end of his career, it was the only one of his works explicitly named when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Decide what you think yourself, and come join our discussion as we explore its themes of struggle, failure, determination, pride and our place in nature.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm, but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal—a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.