My way of writing is just to try to start with a mess, get into a voice or something that you don't understand, and try to revise my way out of it. And what happens is your subconscious is there, and it will tell you what you're worried about, even if you don't know yourself. So after this last four or five years, look at the book, and it's all people who are either confused or, you know, deluded, and then they sort of try to stumble towards some kind of truth. It's a collection of also about having jobs, and a lot of your short stories are about having jobs. The submission that that involves, but also
The Man Booker prize winning novelist George Saunders turns to short-stories for his latest book, Liberation Day. From workers dressed as ‘ghouls’ in an underground amusement park to brainwashed political protestors and story-telling slaves his protagonists underscore what it means to live in community with others. George Saunders tells Tom Sutcliffe how his stories veer from bizarre fantasy to brutal reality.
The move from fantasy to stark reality can be seen in the history of Russians living in exile in Paris after the Revolution in 1917. Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs details how former princes, used to a life of luxury, could be seen driving taxicabs. While some emigres, like Diaghilev and Chagall, found great success in this new world, others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and homesickness for a country that was no longer theirs.
The BFI and UK-wide horror film season In Dreams are Monsters celebrates how monstrous bodies of all kinds have been represented on screen over the past hundred years. Curator Anna Bogutskaya explores the symbolism and emotional impact of ghosts, vampires, witches and, arguably the most politicised of all cinematic monsters, the zombie – a terrifying, dead-eyed blank canvas for social commentary.
Producer: Katy Hickman