Artist and author Babak Ganjei discusses his debut novel On the Bus Without a Phone, a tangential, torrid, tragicomic trip into the mind of a man travelling to a first date

7:00pm-9:00pm Fort Road Bar

Unfolding the course of a phoneless bus journey enroute to a dating app date, artist and author Babak Ganjei's moving, melancholic and surreally funny first novel, On the Bus Without a Phone, rolls out the seemingly unending disappointments, misunderstandings and humiliations of narrator Bob Green’s life so far. Bob’s inner and outer worlds, and the characters that inhabit them, provide the jumping off point for segues into love, ennui, race, identity, mobile phones, longing, fatherhood, fast food, MF DOOM, The Remains of the Day and the dicey protocol of a bus seating plan.

Babak Ganjei is an artist, musician (Absentee, Wet Paint) and writer (Hilarious Consequences, Art Is The Thing Nobody Asked You To Do). He also hosts the show Hot Mess on NTS radio, and has written and performed in the short films Waiting for Potato and Freelancer. After a four year struggle, he finally sold a set of twigs on eBay for £82. He'll be discussing On the Bus Without a Phone, which is out now on the glorious Rough Trade Books, with Margate-based author Ryan J. Smith.