The Bookshelf October Book Buzz: Andrew Pippos, Kiran Desai, Olga Ravn & More
Oct 30, 2025
54:06
Kate and Cassie are back in the studio, introducing a line-up of October releases that span continents, centuries, and genres, kicking off with an Australian story set in the world of print journalism in Andrew Pippos' The Transformations. Then, we head to India with Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a grand tale shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. And finally, we travel back to 16th-century Denmark, where the spectre of witch trials looms large in Olga Ravn's The Wax Child.
BOOKS
- Andrew Pippos, The Transformations — Picador
- Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — Hamish Hamilton
- Olga Ravn, The Wax Child — Viking Penguin (Translated from Danish by Martin Aitken)
GUESTS
- Scott Stephens — Editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics online and co-host of The Minefield on Radio National (with Waleed Aly)
- Beejay Silcox — Critic and writer
OTHER BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- EM Forster, Howard's End
- Charles Dickens, works
- Ernest Hemingway, works
- Leo Tolstoy, works
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, works
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- Jeanette Winterson, The Daylight Gate
- Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders
- Jenni Fagan, Hex
- Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts
- Chris Flynn, Here be Leviathans
- Josephine Rowe, Little World
- Angela O'Keefe, Night Blue
- Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
- Lydia Davis, Into the Weeds
- Inger Sigrun Brodey, Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness
- J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimopulos, Speaking in Tongues
- J.M. Coetzee, The Pole
- Toni Morrison, works
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, works
- Lydia Davis, Into the Weeds
- Joy Williams, works
- Lily King, Heart the Lover
- Michael Winkler, Grimmish; Grief Dog
- Devoney Looser, Wild For Austen
- Sofie Laguna, The Underworld
- The Rose Field (The Book of Dust: Volume 3), Philip Pullman
- Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives
- Patti Smith, Bread of Angels
- Mick Herron, Clown Town
- Claire-Louise Bennett, Big Kiss Bye-Bye
- Brandon Taylor, Minor Black Figures
- John Irving, Queen Esther
- Catherine Newman, Wreck
- Eleanor Elliott Thomas, Do We Deserve This
- Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket
- Olivia Laing, The Silver Book
- Jeanette Winterson, One Aladdin Two Lamps
- Madeleine Gray, Chosen Family
- Chris Krauss, The Four Spent the Day Together
- Graeme Macrae Burnet, Benbecula
CREDITS
- Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
- Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
- Sound engineer, Beth Stewart and Ann Marie Debettencor
- Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown