In this Winter season we've already heard from Helga Schubert, Ben Sorgiovanni and Julian George. Joanna Kavenna will be rounding off the series next time, but right here and now we welcome Rachida Lamrabet and her short story Two Girls on Bicycles, translated by Johanna McCalmont.

Lamrabet recalls how this story was set in motion by a chance encounter with an old friend, which brought back memories of pedal-powered escapades while she was a teenager.

"Everyone had a bike," she remembers. "If you didn't have a bike you'd steal a bike…"

Her character decides to leave her childhood behind, a choice that always comes "with a cost", Lamrabet says.

"We're living in a society, especially in western Europe, where apparently it isn't possible to have a compromise between different worlds, different backgrounds. Very often we are led to believe that you cannot have both, you have to make a choice."

The unequal society in which we live is marked by divisions of class and race which could only be addressed through radical change, she continues. "Those who want to maintain the status quo, they are not in favour of that movement."

There are signs that Belgium is beginning to confront its colonial past, but according to Lamrabet "we still have difficulty facing what we did".

"This country cannot continue to hide itself," she says. "It must confront that history."

Perhaps fiction, which is powered by empathy, can play a part.

"It will not change the world overnight," Lamrabet admits, "but I think it's important to take that platform, to introduce these different stories and to tell your perspective."

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