The Shakespeare and Company Interview

All Your Children, Scattered by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is about the lives lived by those in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Those who hid from it, those who fought against it, those who fled it, and those who were born into it. Telling the story of a family through the eyes of three generations—Blanche, her mother Immaculata, and her son Stokely—one of the many remarkable things about All Your Children, Scattered is how Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is able to tell the story on a very human scale, without every overlooking the utterly monstrous and inhuman scale of the events. All Your Children, Scattered — translated by Alison Anderson — is, at its heart, a story about family, loss and the desire to return home — whatever “home” means.Buy All Your Children, Scattered: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7902877/umubyeyi-mairesse-beata-all-your-children-scattered*Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Butare, Rwanda in 1979. Surviving the genocide against the Tutsis, she moved to France in 1994 to study political science and work for humanitarian causes. She is now an acclaimed novelist and poet.Alison Anderson is a literary translator and author of three novels, Hidden Latitudes, Darwin’s Wink and The Summer Guest. She has translated over thirty novels from French, including Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the works by Nobel laureate JMG Le Clézio.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel, The World and All That it Holds starts with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and then takes us from Bosnia, to Uzbekistan, to China and elsewhere, covering a convulsive period of history in which the technological advances, the political turbulence, and the displacement of people bear striking similarities to those of our own time. At it’s heart, though—not exactly beneath the grand sweep, but entwined with it—is a love story between two men, Pinto and Osman, and a novel that never loses sight of the fact that within beneath History, there are humans living, humans loving, humans losing and, crucially, humans coming to understand the scale at which the decisions they make can count.Buy The World and All That it Holds: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5273994/hemon-aleksandar-the-world-and-all-that-it-holds*Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo and lives in Chicago. He is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles, and The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work also appears regularly in the New Yorker and Granta, among other publications.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

Our guest for this year’s Valentine’s Special is one of the most innovative, radical and compelling writers at work today Meena Kandasamy. This year Meena returns to poetry with The Book of Desire, a new translation of the third part of the Thirukural, the foundational poem of Tamil culture. With her new version, Kandasamy offers a feminist interventionist translation that feels fresh, lively and sensual. Meena Kandasamy’s The Book of Desire is a genuine marvel.Buy The Book of Desire: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7747662/kandasamy-meena-the-book-of-desire*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe 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.*Poet, novelist, activist and translator, Meena Kandasamy has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), and the critically acclaimed novel, Gypsy Goddess. Her second novel, When I Hit You, was chosen as a book of the year by The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, and The Observer and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018. In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded International Pen’s Hermann Kesten Prize for her work as “a fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.”Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel The Hero of this Book is the profound and poignant account of one writer’s attempt to convey something of the irrepressible, indomitable, indefatigable, almost indescribable character of her recently deceased mother on the page. Although the narrator repeatedly stresses that this is a novel, and not a memoir, that’s to say neither a memoir by McCracken nor a memoir by the narrator…although what exactly the difference is between each of the two forms, and how each lends itself to the task at hand, is also an important interrogation of this extraordinary and tender book.Buy The Hero of this Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7384323/mccracken-elizabeth-the-hero-of-this-book*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe 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.*Elizabeth McCracken is the award-winning author of eight books, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, The Giant's House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imag­ination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award), The Souvenir Museum and The Hero of This Book. She has received grants and fellow­ships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and she was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fic­tion at the University of Texas at Austin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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 Adam is joined by Don Paterson, multi-award winning, and much beloved poet, and now author of one of the extraordinary and refreshing memoir, TOY FIGHTS: A BOYHOOD. Charting the first two decades of the poet’s life, from his birth in Dundee to his move to London, TOY FIGHTS is a book about many things: music, class, religion, origami, money, mental illness, and family. It’s also about poetry, although perhaps in a more oblique way than the reader might be expecting.TOY FIGHTS is both uproariously funny, and yet profoundly tender, and manages to be sobecause it is stuffed with that ingredient by which any memoir succeeds or fails—authenticity. It’s also a deeply political book, although one which not only eschews ideology and facile categorisations of class, but vigorously pours scorn upon then.Buy Toy Fights: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7753105/paterson-don-toy-fights*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe 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.*Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He also works as a jazz musician.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

In this special episode of the Shakespeare and Company podcast, we look back at our bookseller’s favourite reads of the year.Some of these titles were published in 2022, others just happened to rise to the top of their respective “to read” piles in the past twelve months…but they all come with the S&Co. stamp of approval.There’s something for everyone here, from a rock star’s autobiography, to a novel about a 19th century translator’s revolt, to a classic of modern science fiction that spans something like a billion earth years. Find the full list below.Sign up to our newsletter: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/subscriptionsDancing in Odessa, Ilya Kaminsky: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6316982/kaminsky-ilya-dancing-in-odessaCleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6416524/mellors-coco-cleopatra-and-frankensteinHarlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6461812/whitehead-colson-harlem-shuffleThe Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6433167/harris-nathan-the-sweetness-of-waterFrom a Low and Quiet Sea, Donal Ryan: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6871035/ryan-donal-from-a-low-and-quiet-seaTrespasses by Louise Kennedy: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6192095/louise-kennedy-kennedy-trespassesCormac McCarthy, The Passenger and Stella Maris: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5474563/mccarthy-cormac-the-passengerOpen Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6294505/nelson-caleb-azumah-open-waterBabel Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, R. F. Kuang: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6031122/kuang-r-f-babelThe Hummingbird, Sandro Veronesi: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6191021/veronesi-sandro-the-hummingbirdThe Queens of Sarmiento Park, Camila Sosa Villada: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6111567/villada-camila-sosa-the-queens-of-sarmiento-parkThe Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5227917/liu-cixin-the-three-body-problemA Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6951005/saunders-george-a-swim-in-a-pond-in-the-rainAgatha Christie, Lucy Worsley: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6007132/worsley-lucy-agatha-christieThe Storyteller, Dave Grohl: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6113617/grohl-dave-the-storytellerThe Naked Don't Fear the Water, Matthieu Aikins: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6088623/aikins-matthieu-the-naked-don-t-fear-the-waterThe Climate Book, Greta Thunberg: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7314067/thunberg-greta-the-climate-bookFight Night, Miriam Toews: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5994736/toews-miriam-fight-night*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

Katy Hessel made her name highlighting the grotesque disparity between the representation of men and women in art galleries and fighting to correct it. Through her podcast and Instagram account, The Great Women artists, and now in her magisterial book The Story of Art Without Men. Beginning in the 16th century, Hessel demonstrates time and again how women have been erased from the history of art, and how—time and again—despite the restrictions imposed by the constraints of the patriarchy have proven significantly more radical and inventive than their male counterparts.Buy The Story of Art Without Men here: *SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe 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.*Katy Hessel is an art historian, presenter, and curator dedicated to celebrating female artists. The founder of @thegreatwomenartists on Instagram and the podcast of the same name, she lives in London.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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 December—six months after saying goodbye—Bloomcast is back for a Holiday Special! Join Alice, Lex and Adam as they answer your questions, play games, tease each other, drink (tea, whiskey, Gimber) and leap off Forty Foot and into Ulysses one more (one last?) time…*Bloomcast is a ten-part plunge into James Joyce's Ulysses presented by Adam Biles, Alice McCrum, and Lex Paulson, live from Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Join them as they muddle through this radical, sublime, and often misunderstood novel first published one hundred years ago, in 1922.  Please share your thoughts on the book and anything you’d like to hear us discuss: ulysses@shakespeareandcompany.com A student of environmental policy at Sciences Po-Paris, Alice McCrum runs programming at the American Library in Paris.  In between fits of Joycean nerdery, Dr. Lex Paulson is Executive Director of the School of Collective Intelligence at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco. An adopted Parisian, he teaches at Sciences Po-Paris and writes on the past and future of democracy. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, Paris. He is the author of the novel Feeding Time, available in French as Défense de nourrir les vieux. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gone with the Wind is one of the highest grossing films of all time, based on one of the bestselling novels ever written. It is also, according to Sarah Churchwell in her new book, a story “ about enslavers busily pretending that slavery doesn’t matter. Which”—Churchwell adds “is pretty much the story of American history.”The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells provides a powerful critique of the book and film, and an excoriating analysis of how it has shaped the way Americans understand their country, rewrite their history, and excuse their crimes. Buy The Wrath to Come here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6334239/churchwell-sarah-the-wrath-to-come*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe 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.*Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review, and she comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for television and radio, where appearances include Question Time, Newsnight and The Review Show. She has judged many literary prizes, including the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she was a co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer’s Award. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.

🔔Hunchback of Notre-Dame Special! 🔔To celebrate the launch of our exclusive S&Co edition of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame—as well as a limited-edition gift bundle featuring a signed print of the beautiful cover art—Adam is joined by Krista Halverson, S&Co Publishing Director, and artist Neil Gower, to discuss this extraordinary classic of French literature.Find out more about our Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7931829/the-hunchback-bundle*The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle benefits the Friends of Shakespeare and Company Association and includes :- A copy of Shakespeare and Company’s 2022 edition of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, inked with the bookshop stamp. Produced in collaboration with Penguin Classics, the paperback has a gatefold cover, with original artwork and metallic-ink details, and a new introduction penned by the bookshop’s editors.- A print of the cover illustration, hand-signed by its brilliant artist, Neil Gower, and stamped on the back with the bookshop’s hallmark and the date. It measures 37cm by 26cm (14.5" by 10.2") and was printed on 320g paper stock by Art & Caractère in Lavaur, France.All proceeds from the bundle go to Friends of Shakespeare and Company, a not-for-profit association created during the pandemic to support the bookshop’s noncommercial activities. These include our free author events, upstairs reading library, Tumbleweed guest program, weekly podcast, publishing projects, and writers’ rooms, where since 1951 more than 30,000 poets and authors have slept the night for free in Paris. Because the new Association is taking on the related costs of these endeavours, we are better able to begin rebuilding the bookshop financially, to better safeguard Shakespeare and Company for the future—all while not having to sacrifice what’s at the heart of the bookshop: a community of readers and writers. Buy our Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7931829/the-hunchback-bundle*Krista Halverson is publishing director at Shakespeare and Company. She wrote and edited the book Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, and she is co-editor of the forthcoming poetry anthology, Paris in Our View, featuring poems about the French capital--it will be published by the bookshop early next year. Prior to moving to Paris, she was the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, Francis Ford Coppola's literary and art quarterly, based in San Francisco. Neil Gower is an internationally acclaimed graphic artist, best known for his book jackets (Bill Bryson, William Golding) and his literary cartography (Kazuo Ishiguro, Jilly Cooper, Simon Armitage). His work has been widely published in Europe and the US, including magazines such as The New Yorker, The Economist and Vanity Fair. He was Contributing Artist to Conde Nast Traveler in New York for 10 years. In 2017, he illustrated/co-authored As Kingfishers Catch Fire, a literary ornithology, with Alex Preston. The intensity and giddiness of distilling written evocations of birds into paint realigned his creativity towards exploring possibilities with his own words. His first collection of poetry Meet Me in Palermo was recently published by The Frogmore Press.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-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.