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Jay Bernard: Whenever I am asked to write about something – usually because I share some social category with the author, rather than an aesthetic or political affinity – I find myself reaching to become something I am not, some kind of singular authority But this novel sparks so many thoughts that I have discussed with you (and others) in different contexts Why not speak to you directly? And then we can put across the flavour of our everyday conversation   Sita Balani: With reviews, there’s an obligation to be clever, to be certain, to gain a kind of mastery over the text Reviewing often feels like being pitted against the author in some way, and that dynamic can be a conservative one Whereas when you and I discuss fiction together – which we do often – we test out ideas, express uncertainty, and think together about what the book does We rarely come to definitive conclusions, because the things we read become folded into our lives, our conversations, our relationships   J: So This is a novel about Hiram, the gifted child of a black slave and a white master, who tries to escape and ends up working with the Underground Railroad I found it difficult to read, because although my family is Caribbean, ultimately I am descended from slaves and this is my history A lot felt familiar about him – yet this familiarity was more a sense of my (our?) overfamiliarity with the US That’s the advantage of being in conversation, I think, to diffract the story through our different experiences, rather than attempt to categorise it   S:  Yes It’s funny, because despite my own personal distance from this story, being British Asian, the territory is still quite familiar As much as it’s a novel about slavery, it’s a novel about America – the most mediated nation on earth – so, in a way, it’s impossible not to come to the story knowing too much We’ve watched the long aftermath of the plantation society play out on our screens through the images of police brutality that circulate globally