The East West Street author joins award-winning photographer Diana Matar to discuss City of Lions, two essays about the Ukrainian city separated by 70 years.

Two essays published together, separated by seven decades, united by one city.

In 1946 the Polish novelist and poet Józef Wittlin’s wrote in exile about his beloved Lwów. Over 70 years later Philippe Sands shares his perspective as a descendent on what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv. The East West Street author joins award-winning artist Diana Matar, whose stunning photographs feature alongside their words in City of Lions: Portrait of a City in Two Acts.

Buy a copy of City of Lions by Philippe Sands.

This event will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.

About the speakers:

Diana Matar is an American photographer based in London. Her installations ask whether landscapes might bear the burden of history. She is the author of two monographs Evidence (2014) and the forthcoming My America (April 2024) and portfolios of her work have been published in more than 30 books and journals and exhibited in more than 20 international institutions. She is the recipient of the Deutsche Bank Prize for Fine Art; the Mother Jones Award in Documentary Photography and a Ford Foundation Grant for artists making work about memory and violence. In 2022 Matar’s work was honoured with the Contemporary Art Society bursary which enabled The Imperial War Museum to purchase a major installation of her photographs.

Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at UCL and a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers. He has been involved in many of the most important international cases of recent years, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo and the Rohingya. He is the author of Lawless World, Torture Team, East West Street, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction, and Sunday Times bestselling The Ratline. He is a contributor to the Financial Times, The Guardian, New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair, and makes regular appearances on radio and television. He is also President of English PEN and a member of the board of the Hay Festival