London Review Bookshop Podcasts

Elena Poniatowska’s work, in both fiction and journalism, has always been devoted to giving a voice to the voiceless, the disenfranchised and the oppressed. Her most famous book La noche de Tlatelolco (1971) dealt with the massacre of up to 300 protesters in Mexico City in 1968. Others of her books have been recreations of the lives of ordinary Mexicans, such as the victims of the 1985 earthquake, and of well-known artists and radicals such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti. Her most recent novel Leonora, recently translated for Serpent’s Tail by Amanda Hopkinson, is based on the life of the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington who sought and found refuge in Mexico, the country where she created most of her finest work and where she died in 2011. Poniatowska will be appearing at the shop to talk about her career with the poet and publisher Michael Schmidt.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writer and film-maker Jonathan Meades joined us at the Bookshop to present and discuss *Pedigree Mongrel* (Test Centre), a new album composed of specially-recorded readings from his books *Pompey* (1993), *Museum Without Walls* (2012) and *An Encyclopaedia of Myself* (2014). Combined with the distinctive soundscapes of Mordant Music, *Pedigree Mongrel* is both a unique retrospective of Meades’s fictional and essayistic writings, and a new and significant standalone work.     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Short stories don't have to be like short stories. They can be experiences, visitations, slices of events or part revelations of a truth or a lie. Kirsty Gunn and Deborah Levy joined us at the Bookshop to discuss how they go about making up their own short fiction and the influence of modernism in their recent collections, Infidelities and Black Vodka.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Katharine Norbury's affecting memoir The Fish Ladder (Bloomsbury) deals with grief, recovery and the redemptive power of stories and journeys. Abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent, Norbury was brought up by loving adoptive parents. As an adult, and having recently suffered a miscarriage, she embarked with her nine-year-old daughter on a journey to trace a river from sea to source. The novelist and critic Amit Chaudhuri has described her book about that journey as an 'extraordinary exploration of how we use narrative to understand our place in the world'. Katharine Norbury was joined at the shop by novelist, poet and fellow memoirist Blake Morrison for an evening of literary conversation. Blake Morrison's many books include two masterpieces of family literature And When Did You Last See Your Father? (Granta) and Things My Mother Never Told Me (Vintage). His latest title Shingle Street (Chatto) is his first full-length poetry collection for nearly 30 years. Set on and around the Suffolk coast, it handles

Patrick Cockburn, regular contributor to the LRB and Middle East correspondent for the Independent, is, according to Seymour Hersh, 'Quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today'. His latest book The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (Verso) describes the origins of the new rebel state in Iraq and Syria, setting it in the context of the region's turbulent recent history, and reflecting on its possible futures. Cockburn joined us at the Bookshop to discuss his book, and its implications, with Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News international editor and author of Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Islamic scholar Robert Irwin joined us at the Bookshop in discussion with mythographer Marina Warner about a groundbreaking new translation of Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange, and its implications for our understanding of the classical Arabic storytelling tradition. The 18 medieval tales collected here (by Penguin Classics), probably originating in the 9th and 10th centuries, are the earliest examples of Arabic stories known to have survived. A few of the stories were collected and adapted, centuries after their composition, in The Arabian Nights. The remainder have never before appeared in English  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chris Kraus is the author of four novels, most recently Summer of Hate, and two books of art and cultural criticism. The New York Observer describes her as 'the art world's favorite novelist,' and her recent monograph, Lost Properties, about conceptual art and economic activism, was published for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. She is a co-editor of the independent Semiotexte, with Hedi El Kholti and Sylvere Lotringer, and founded the Native Agents imprint that initially published first-person female writing. Torpor, her third novel, will be re-published in a critical edition this winter. She teaches at the European Graduate School, and is presently writing a critical biography of the American writer Kathy Acker. On a rare visit to London, she spoke with Zoe Pilger, author of Eat My Heart Out (Serpent's Tail) about schizophrenic projects, male muses and wilful amateurism.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Ellroy’s hardboiled, idiosyncratic explorations of Los Angeles police corruption and midcentury Washington power politics have earned him a worldwide following; his new novel, Perfidia (Cornerstone), is the first in a new trilogy featuring some familiar characters, including the gleefully amoral Dudley Smith. Ellroy joined us at the Bookshop in conversation with the American novelist David Vann, whose most recent book is Goat Mountain (Windmill). Warning: contains strong language.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Writing about place – a sub-genre of travel writing that subverts it by being about staying put, rather than moving – has been enjoying an extraordinary vogue of late. Three of the genre’s finest practitioners joined us at the shop to discuss its significance and future. Philip Marsden’s Rising Ground (Granta) explores the small part of Cornwall to which he has recently transplanted himself; Julian Hoffman, in The Small Heart of Things (Georgia) finds home around the shores of Greece's Prespa lakes, and Ken Worpole in The New English Landscape, a collaboration with the photographer Jason Orton (Field Station), proposes a new paradigm for topographical beauty based on the post-industrial landscape of the Thames estuary. The evening was hosted by Gareth Evans.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When I was in eighth grade my history teacher wrote on my report card: “She only does what she wants to do.” She thought that was a bad thing, and it’s not. Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres, a retelling of King Lear transplanted to 20th-century Iowa. She joined us at the shop to read from her latest novel, Some Luck (Mantle), the first book in a projected trilogy, which returns to rural Iowa in the 1920s. Charlotte Mendelson wrote of the book: ‘So here it is at last, the Great American Novel and, in retrospect, it seems obvious that the great Jane Smiley would be the one who wrote it.’ Jane Smiley spoke in conversation with Alex Clark.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our top 1% take 15% of all income. That’s the highest share of anywhere in Europe. Our bottom fifth are the poorest in Europe. In Inequality and the 1% (Verso) Danny Dorling (Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford, or, as Simon Jenkins more pithily put it, 'geographer royal by appointment to the left'), goes in pursuit of the latest research into how the lives and ideas of the richest 1 per cent affect the remaining 99 per cent of us. The findings are shocking. Inequality in the UK is increasing as more and more people are driven towards the poverty line, with profound implications for education, health and life expectancy. Danny Dorling joined us at the Bookshop in conversation with Kate Pickett, Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, and co-author (with Richard Wilkinson) of the ground-breaking The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.  See acast

In 'The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It' (Allen Lane) Owen Jones analyses the people and institutions that govern our lives – government, the media, the banks and the accountancy firms – and exposes usually invisible networks that bind them together. Far from working on our behalf, as they often claim, these institutions are, Owen Jones argues, the biggest threat to our democracy today. Owen joined Paul Myerscough at the Bookshop to present his argument, and to debate its implications.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Leading sociologist of art [Sarah Thornton][1] goes behind the scenes with 33 living artists including Ai Weiwei, Maurizio Cattelan, Cindy Sherman and Isaac Julien to ask the apparently simple but vexing question, ‘What is an artist?' Thornton joined us at the Bookshop to talk about her new book, *[33 Artists in 3 Acts][2]* (Granta), with the celebrated artist Isaac Julien.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In what may well be the largest work of public art in history, Turner prize-winner Mark Wallinger placed a uniquely designed labyrinth in each of London's 270 Underground stations. The project was commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of London Underground. His extraordinary art-work is documented in Labyrinth: A Journey Through London’s Underground, published by Art / Books in association with Art on the Underground and with contributions from Christian Wolmar, Marina Warner and Will Self. Mark Wallinger came to the Bookshop to talk about the project with Will Self.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Vasily Grossman, now widely regarded as the greatest Russian novelist of the 20th century, died 50 years ago this month. The author of the remarkable Everything Flows and Life and Fate (the only manuscript ever to be itself arrested by the Soviet authorities), Grossman was a crucial witness to the multiple horrors of the period. He did not live to see his greatest books published. This was a unique evening of readings and discussion: Robert Chandler, Grossman’s finest translator, reported back from the first Grossman conference in Russia; historian Antony Beevor and journalist John Lloyd provided commentary; and Janet Suzman gave a reading of extracts and stories. The panel went on to discuss Grossman’s extraordinary achievement and his legacy both in Russia and internationally, in a conversation chaired by Gareth Evans.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Meek came to the bookshop to talk about his new book, Private Island (Verso), a scathing assessment of the last two decades’ privatisation of public assets, ranging from electricity to postal services to municipal housing. What has been lost? Who has benefited? And what’s been the impact on Britain’s wider polity? In the words of John Lanchester, ‘some of it will make you sad, some of it will make you furious, but you are guaranteed to be left feeling that you understand this country much better.’ James Meek was in conversation with journalist Dawn Foster.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Will Self’s latest novel Shark explores the hidden history of the late 20th century, taking in the American invasion of Cambodia, the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and reckless experimentation with psychotropic drugs. Self joined us at the Bookshop to read from Shark and take on questions from the audience.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six autobiographical novels, published in Norway between 2009 and 2011 under the series title *Min Kamp* (‘My Struggle’) have excited controversy and critical acclaim in equal measure. Knausgaard’s unflinching and almost uncritical laying on of detail has led some critics to call him ‘the Norwegian Proust’. ‘There is something ceaselessly compelling about Knausgaard’s book’, wrote James Wood in the *New Yorker*. ‘Even when I was bored, I was interested.’ Karl Ove Knausgaard was joined by Andrew O'Hagan at Saint George's Church, Bloomsbury for a discussion of writing and the boundaries of autobiography.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ali Smith has been described by Kate Atkinson as ‘one of the few contemporary writers ploughing a genuinely modernist furrow.’ Her latest novel *how to be both* continues her almost reckless experimentation with form and content, adapting the artistic techniques of fresco painting to literature in telling a dual-time tale of art, love, injustice and redemption. Ali came to the Bookshop to give a reading from her novel, and went on to discuss it with Alex Clark of the *Guardian*.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'Who has the temerity to call themselves a philosopher? The word “philosopher" is an honorific. It should be bestowed upon you by others.' Lars Iyer’s latest novel Wittgenstein Jr (Melville House) concerns the academic career of a group of Cambridge philosophy students, deeply under the influence of their teacher, whom they have nicknamed ‘Wittgenstein’. ‘Wittgenstein’s’ austere, exacting philosophy provides a tragicomic counterpoint to the chemical excesses of student life as the novel moves towards an unexpectedly hopeful and touching conclusion. Lars Iyer joined us at the Bookshop to read from his work, and to discuss it with the philosopher and Wittgenstein biographer Ray Monk.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.