Meera Syal

n her first London appearance for the novel, Syal will be in conversation with the award-winning cultural journalist Maya Jaggi about the ethical and artistic dilemmas of portraying the lives of the poor in fact or fiction. Meera Syal's third novel, The House of Hidden Mothers, is a wrenching tale of a couple in East London desperate for a child, and the surrogate mother in rural India who seems the answer to their dreams.