Past Event – Literature & Psychoanalysis: Never Let Me Go

Our Literature & Psychoanalysis series continues its successful migration online with psychoanalyst, academic and writer Josh Cohen presenting on the topic of clones, their relation to time and what they teach us about existence. Josh will deliver a presentation to guests and then be in conversation with series leader Arabel Charlaff, before taking questions from the audience.

 Never Let Me Go

From the author of the 2021 Booker Longlisted Klara and the Sun
In one of the most acclaimed novels of recent years Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His nine works of fiction have earned him many honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold over a million copies in Faber editions. He received a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.

Josh Cohen

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice and Professor of Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London. He teaches both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis on various professional trainings. He is the author of numerous books and articles on psychoanalysis, literature and culture, including How to Read Freud and The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark, Not Working: Why We Have to Stop and most recently, How to Live. What to Do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature. Losers, an essay on the politics and rhetoric of humility, will be published in October.

Arabel Charlaff

Arabel Charlaff is a psychodynamic psychotherapist who has worked in the NHS, the higher education sector and in private practice. Before retraining, she worked as an editor, literary consultant and ghost writer. She is particularly interested in the ways in which fiction and psychoanalysis can speak to and of each other and the rewards to be found in such a conversation. It was to this end that she founded Characters on the Couch, a writers’ service which combines clinical and editorial expertise. She teaches at the Faber Academy and at WPF Therapy.