London Review Bookshop Podcast

Novelist, memoirist, essayist and contributing editor to the LRB John Lanchester sets out to chill you to the virtual bone with his first ever collection of short fiction Reality and Other Stories (Faber). As if modern life weren’t unsettling enough, Lanchester makes it even more so with tales of haunted mobile phones, selfie sticks with demonic powers and other stories of technology gone horribly, horribly wrong in this retread of M.R. James for the Zoom generation.As we prepare for what might be the strangest Hallowe’en in living memory, John Lanchester discussed the uncanny with the LRB’s head of special projects Sam Kinchin-Smith.Buy the book from us here: https://londonreviewbookbox.co.uk/products/reality-and-other-stories-by-john-lanchester Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The European Union Prize for Literature aims to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of Europe’s contemporary literature and to promote the circulation of literature beyond national and linguistic borders. To discuss the prize, the state of European literature and Britain's place in the post-Brexit international literary community, we welcomed two past winners: Sunjeev Sahota, who won in 2017 for his Man Booker shortlisted novel The Year of Runaways; and 2014 winner Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing. The discussion was chaired by critic and former EUPL jury member Catherine Taylor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In celebration of the life, work and legacy of William Trevor, one of the giants of modern Irish fiction, authors Salley Vickers, Kevin Barry, Hermione Lee and BBC Radio 4 Books Editor Di Speirs read from and talked about their favourites of his novels and short fiction, to mark the publication of Last Stories (Viking). Trevor, who died in 2016, won the Whitbread prize three times, was five times shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and in 2014 was made Saoi by Aosdána, Ireland’s most prestigious artistic award. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were joined by Toby Litt, Helen Charman, Lisa Kelly and Mary Jean Chan, four of the poets featured in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII. From the first anthology, published in 1994, through to this seventh volume, the series showcases the work of some of the most engaging and inventive new poets writing in English from around the world. The New Poetries anthologies have never sought to identify a school, much less a generation: the poets included employ a wide range of styles, forms and approaches, and new need not be taken to imply young. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Three-times Booker-nominated author and LRB editor-at-large Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel centres on the powerful friendship between James and Tully, fuelled by teenage rebellion and the unforgettable soundtrack of late 80s British music. Stretching over three decades, Mayflies is a captivating study of adolescence becoming adulthood, with all the shades of light and darkness that has made O’Hagan one of the most respected writers of his generation.O’Hagan was in conversation with Edmund Gordon, biographer of Angela Carter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Igbo and Tamil writer and artist Akwaeke Emezi's mesmerising first novel Freshwater was published to universal acclaim in 2018, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Their second book was Pet, a novel for young adults that raised difficult and pertinent questions about cultures of denial, and was described as ‘beautiful and genre-expanding’ in the New York Times. To mark the publication of their second novel for adults The Death of Vivek Oji, a heart-wrenching tale of one family’s discords and misunderstandings, the London Review Bookshop hosted a live online conversation between Akwaeke Emezi and their editor at Faber, Louisa Joyner.The interview between Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Dionne Brand referred to in their conversation can be found here: https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2018/06/temporary-spaces-of-joy-and-freedom/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Novelist and essayist Kirsty Gunn’s latest novel Caroline’s Bikini is a powerful retelling of one of the oldest stories in western literature – that of unrequited love. In a series of conversations in West London bars, Gunn unravels the passion of financier Evan Gordonstone for the glamorous Caroline Beresford, an unravelling that brings Gordonstone to the brink of destruction. Kirsty Gunn is the author of six works of fiction and several essay collections, and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Dundee. She read from her latest book, and talked about it with Max Porter, author of Lanny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leading political thinker Chantal Mouffe proposes a new way to define left populism today: it is more than an ideology or a political regime. It is a way of doing politics that can take various forms but emerges when one aims at building a new subject of collective action — the people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Across five collections, Maureen N. McLane's poetry has won admirers for its distinctive mix of the humourous and the cerebral, a voice the London Review of Books described as ‘Somewhere between teenage fangirl and Wordsworth professor.’ The best of those five collections is now gathered in her first selected, What I'm Looking For (Penguin).McLane was at the shop to read from and discuss her work with poet and critic Sarah Howe, whose collection Loop of Jade won the 2015 T.S. Eliot prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘This past is a dimension of the present, without which the present is mutilated.’In Lord of all the Dead, Javier Cercas plunges back into his family history, revisiting Ibahernando, his parents' village in southern Spain, to discover the truth about his ancestor Manuel Mena, who died fighting on the Francoist side at the Battle of the Ebro. Who are we to judge the dead? How can we reconcile national and family history, the political and the domestic? Cercas was in conversation with Gaby Wood, journalist and literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.