In Rick Gekoski’s Darke, the protagonist eschews the outside world, turning to philosophers and poets to make sense of humanity’s tragic essence. But just as he prepares to abjure life entirely, he is offered a chance of salvation.

Jeremy Gavron’s Felix Culpa, is a stylistically experimental noir fiction, posing the question: whose stories deserve to be told? And whose words should do the telling?

Rick Gekoski is a writer, rare-book dealer and academic. He has written several widely praised non-fiction books including Staying Up, Tolkien’s Gown, Outside of a Dog and Lost, Stolen or Shredded. In 2011 he chaired the judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize. He teaches creative non-fiction for the Arvon Foundation, and sits on their Development Board. In 2010 he was elected a trustee of English PEN.

Jeremy Gavron is the author of several works of non-fiction and novels, including The Book of Israel, winner of the Encore Award, An Acre of Barren Ground and A Woman on the Edge of Time, a memoir of his mother. A former foreign correspondent in Africa and India, he now lives in London and teaches on the MAF program for writers at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

Anne Karpf is a writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist. A regular broadcaster and contributor to the Guardian, her books, including The War After: Living With the Holocaust and How to Age, have been translated into nine languages. She is Reader in Professional Writing and Cultural Inquiry at London Metropolitan University.