Carole Cadwalladr in conversation with Ece Temelkuran at IABF

Across the world, the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. We face overlapping crises, and are learning, again and again, that no institution is so concrete it can’t turn to dust, and no home is too strong to be destroyed. The question of what “home” even means starts to feel newly urgent.

That’s the terrain of Nation of Strangers, the new book by award-winning Turkish writer and political thinker Ece Temelkuran, author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Fascism. It’s also the focus of this Manchester event, which brings Temelkuran into conversation with Nerve co-founder and investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr.

Described as being “for anyone who feels alienated by an ever more monstrous world,” Nation of Strangers is a series of letters from one stranger to another, politically attuned and deeply personal. In the decade since she left her own home, Temelkuran has been a political Cassandra, warning those convinced it couldn’t happen in their country that fascism is coming. The book gathers those warnings into correspondence that reflects on exile, migration and belonging, and asks what it might mean to rebuild a sense of home together. Brian Eno calls it “her most ambitious and dazzling book yet”.

Cadwalladr’s role in this conversation matters. A press freedom advocate, TEDtalker and long-time interrogator of power, her work has persistently exposed the fault lines where money, influence and ideology coalesce. Put together, this is less a cosy book chat than an opportunity to think through exile, belonging and democratic fragility in public, with two speakers who have refused the comforts of denial.

The event is presented by THE NERVE, a fearless, female-founded media title built by five former Guardian and Observer journalists who believe the UK needs more truly independent journalism.