The Shakespeare and Company Interview

In anticipation of the first episode of Friends of Shakespeare and Company Read Ulysses this Wednesday, we were delighted to talk to former S&Co tumbleweed Patrick Hastings, and the creator of UlyssesGuide.com, about The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses, his essential companion to this modernist classic.Buy The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781421443492/the-guide-to-james-joyces-ulysses*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR EARLY EPISODES AND BONUS FEATURESAll episodes of Friends of Shakespeare Read Ulysses are free and available to everyone. However, if you want to be the first to hear the recordings, by subscribing, you can now get early access to recordings of complete sections.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enSubscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoIn addition, if you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, a subscription gets you access to regular bonus episodes of the bookshop's interview podcast. All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Discover more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/homeAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeHear more from Alex Freiman here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Follow him on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alex.guitarfreiman/Hear more of Flora Hibberd here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5EFG7rqfVfdyaXiRZbRkpSHear more from Adrien Chicot here: https://bbact.lnk.to/utco90/Follow him on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/adrienchicot/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Booker-shortlisted Nadifa Mohamed discussing The Fortune Men a gripping fictional portrayal of a real miscarriage of justice in 1950s Cardiff.Buy The Fortune Men here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780241466940/the-fortune-men-shortlisted-for-the-costa-novel-of-the-year-awardBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman's noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.*Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somaliland, in 1981 and moved to Britain at the age of four. Her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, won the Betty Trask Prize; it was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN Open Book Award. Her second novel, Orchard of Lost Souls, won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Prix Albert Bernard. Nadifa Mohamed was selected for the Granta Best of Young British Novelists in 2013, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Fortune Men was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Nadifa Mohamed lives in London.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2nd February - 16th June 2022933 Pages, 110 readers, (roughly) 70 characters, 18 Sections, 5 months, 1 book. 100 years.Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES by James JoyceTo listen, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES is conceived and produced at Shakespeare and Company in Paris by S&Co Literary Director Adam Biles in collaboration with Professor Lex Paulson, and in partnership with Penguin Classics and Hay Festival.Find out more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/home Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is the wonderful Rebecca Solnit discussing Orwell’s Roses, her fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.Buy Orwell’s Roses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783788620/orwells-rosesBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*From 1936 to 1940, the newly-wed George Orwell lived in a small cottage inHertfordshire, writing, and tending his garden. When Rebecca Solnit visited the cottage, she discovered the descendants of the roses that he had planted many decades previously. These survivors, as well as the diaries he kept of his planting and growing, provide a springboard for a fresh look at Orwell's motivations and drives -and the optimism that countered his dystopian vision - and open up a profound mediation on our relationship to plants, trees and the natural world.Tracking Orwell's impact on political thought over the last century, Solnit journeys toEngland and Russia, Mexico and Colombia, exploring the political and historical events that shaped Orwell's life and her own. From a history of roses to discussions of climate change and insights into structural inequalities in contemporary society, Orwell's Roses is a fresh reading of a towering figure of 20th century literary and political life, which finds optimism, solace and solutions to our 21st century world.*Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Call Them By Their True Names, The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. A contributing editor to Harper’s, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our first podcast of 2022 we leave the bookshop and take to the buses of Paris for a conversation with Lauren Elkin, author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute.Buy No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781838014186/no-9192-notes-on-a-parisian-commute*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Commuting between English and French, Lauren Elkin chronicles a life in transit. From musings on Virginia Woolf and Georges Perec, to her first impressions in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, to the discovery of her ectopic pregnancy, her diary sketches a portrait of the author, not as an artist, but as a pregnant woman on a Parisian bus. In the troubling intimacy of public transport, Elkin queries the lines between togetherness and being apart, between the everyday and the eventful, registering the ordinary makings of a city and its people.Lauren Elkin is a Franco-American writer and translator. Her last book, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her translation, with Charlotte Mandell, of Claude Arnaud's biography of Jean Cocteau, won the 2017 French-American Foundation's Translation Prize. Her next book, Art Monsters: on Beauty and Excess, is to be published by Chatto & Windus. She currently lives in London, with her partner and son.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by Claire Messud to discuss A Dream Life, her drily funny, deeply perceptive story about displacement, and class, and social climbing, and the effect that having domestic staff can have not only on one’s family, but on one’s sense of self.Buy A Dream Life here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781649697295/a-dream-lifeBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*“A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun.” Helen GarnerWhen the Armstrong family moves from New York at the dawn of the 1970s, Australia feels, to Alice Armstrong, like the end of the earth. Residing in a grand manor on the glittering Sydney Harbour, her family finds their life has turned upside down. As she navigates this strange new world, Alice must find a way to weave an existence from its shimmering mirage.Lies and self-deception are at the heart of this keenly observed story. This is a sharp, biting and playful tale with a cast of unscrupulous characters adrift in a dream life of their own making.Written with the characteristic delicacy of touch, humour and emotional insight that makes Claire Messud one of our greatest writers.*Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a little treat this Christmas, we’re delighted to bring you an extract of Cerys Matthews reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas. Cerys read the same extract when she last visited us at the bookshop in December 2015. It was such a magical moment that, when we learned that Cerys had recorded this story for posterity, we asked if we could share some of it with you.The full version is available on CD here: https://cerysmatthews.co.uk/product/dylan-thomas-a-childs-christmas-poems-and-tiger-eggs/Or to stream on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4r8YyMz1maFauVfo9RznXv?si=WSGzsLOJSUu5xzDjY-0Q1wIf you enjoy listening to our podcast and would like to spend even more of 2022 with us in Paris, you can now subscribe for exclusive regular bonus episodes.On Spotify: https://anchor.fm/sandco/subscribeOn Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enOr on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32H…kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by Sarah Hall, author of Burntcoat a novel of and for our times. Called “dark and brilliant” by Sarah Moss and “a masterpiece” by Daisy Johnson, much like the Japanese burnt timber technique evoked in the book, Burntcoat leaves readers scarred but fortified, more ready to face life’s elements.Buy Burntcoat here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780571329328/burntcoatBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*You were the last one here before I closed the door of Burntcoat, before we all shut our doors.In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. Her life will draw to an end in the coming days.Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world.*Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. Twice nominated for the Man Booker Prize, she is the award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections: The Beautiful Indifference, which won the Edge Hill and Portico prizes, Madame Zero, winner of the East Anglian Book Award, and Sudden Traveller, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. She is currently the only author to be four times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, which she won in 2013 with ‘Mrs Fox’ and in 2020 with ‘The Grotesques’.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Shakespeare and Company podcast. Every week or so we release a new conversation with an internationally acclaimed author, recorded at our store in the heart of Paris. Recent guests have included Elif Shafak, Richard Powers, Leïla Slimani, Lauren Groff, Armando Iannucci and many more.And for those of you who want to spend even more time here at Kilometre Zero, you can now subscribe for just three euros a month.For that, you’ll get exclusive access to regular bonus episodes including… An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events. We’re very grateful for your support. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Aysegül Savaş joined Adam live in our writer’s studio to discuss White on White, her book about art and artists, parents and their children, beauty and class, as well as the quest for perfection and the compromises we make in pursuit of it. White on White was called "marvelous" by Lauren Groff and "gentle, mysterious and profound” by Marina Abramović.Buy White on White here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780593330517/white-on-white-a-novelBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio.In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas.What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos.White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.*Ayşegül Savaş is the author of Walking on the Ceiling. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Paris.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.