the lessons | No.68 Project

Highlights: Chic English Hedonism – June 20, 2010 (London, UK)

by Number 68 Project on January 17, 2011 in Past Events

Date: Sunday, Jun 20, 2010 at 6:30 PM
Place: Dalston Boy’s Club

Art
An evening of ‘chic English hedonism’ as told by Orange Prize award-winning author Naomi Alderman.

Food
The menu was inspired by Naomi Alderman’s The Lessons, a novel about gilded youth set in a stilted Oxford backdrop and the relationships they have with affluence, addiction, and power.

Visiting chef Dain Lee lives life in New York as a lyrical dreamscape of food and music. Mixing flavor profiles with a global perspective, the results are fresh, cheeky, and always unconventional. His dishes are deceptively simple, but have a depth and complexity that can only come from someone who understands both the power of an individual note as well as how they fit together to form a symphony.

Drink
5 specially selected rare wines were chosen by Dawid Koeglenberg, former General Manager of Corrigans Mayfair. He has more than 20 years experience in hospitality, vine growing and wine making. He is a qualified lecturer for the Wine & Spirit Trust and also lectures for the London Wine Academy. Dawid is a judge at the international wine & spirit competition in London and talks on BBC radio about wine.

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Naomi Alderman

by Number 68 Project on January 6, 2011 in Past Events

Naomi Alderman was the guest of honor at Number 68 Project’s final London dinner on June 20, 2010, where she read from her book The Lessons. She is a frequent lecturer at The School of Life.

Naomi Alderman did her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University and, after six years working at City law firm and seconded to Manhattan, came back to the UK to complete an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

Her first novel, Disobedience was released in 2006, has been published in 10 languages, and won the Orange Award for New Writers. In 2007 Naomi was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, and one of Waterstones’ 25 Writers for the Future. She’s broadcast for Radio 3 and Radio 4, has appeared on panels and spoken at literary festivals and has taught masterclasses and workshops in creative writing in conjunction with many different institutions.

Naomi also writes online computer games. She was lead writer on the BAFTA-shortlisted alternate reality game Perplex City from 2004-07. In 2008, she wrote the hidden seventh story “Alice in Storyland” for Penguin’s We Tell Stories project. In 2009, she wrote the narrative competition ‘See the Light’ for the Guardian and Damien Hirst’s music production company.

Naomi reviews novels for Prospect and the Financial Times. She has written occasional columns for the Guardian’s G2 section and a regular online column for Guardian Technology. Penguin will publish her new novel in April 2010.

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Testimonial – Naomi Alderman

by Number 68 Project on January 6, 2011 in Past Events

Naomi talks about Number 68 Project and The Lessons:

“The Lessons is a novel of excess, of the dangers and seductive pleasures of having too much, wanting too much, longing for things that can never be ours. Set in Oxford in the 1990s, it charts the fortunes of a group of friends who gather around the mercurial and very wealthy Mark Winters in his crumbling Georgian mansion. Desire abounds, as does ambition, betrayal and, in the end, tragedy. It’s been called “a dark spell of a book”, “a compulsive pleasure” and “very hot”… which was pretty much what I was going for.

Where could be better to celebrate The Lessons than at the Number 68 Project? Number 68 is a glorious homage to the days when people dressed for dinner, brought bang up to date with food that plays with the classics, wines that surprise and delight and an ambience of chic hedonism. I loved Number 68 the first time I came through its doors and it just keeps on getting better. It’s an honour to take part.”

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