London Review Bookshop Podcasts

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.

‘It's a bit mysterious, but somehow the emotion I feel at the heart of whatever I'm writing comes through, usually by my not insisting on it.’ Lydia Davis made a rare London appearance at the Bookshop to read from and discuss her unique body of work. She spoke with Adam Thirlwell about titles, translation and small thoughts.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Helen Macdonald and Tim Dee came to the Bookshop to talk about birds, and about writing about birds. Radio producer Tim Dee propelled himself into the front rank of British nature writing in 2009 with his remarkable birdwatching memoir The Running Sky, followed in 2013 by Four Fields. Helen Macdonald, writer, poet, naturalist, conservationist, historian and some-time falconer, has recently published H is for Hawk which recounts how, under the literary tutelage of T.H. White and in part as a strategy for overcoming personal grief, she acquired and trained a goshawk of her own.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As the world commemorates the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War historian Douglas Newton recounts the hidden history of Britain’s decision to enter the conflict. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, including the private papers and correspondence of leading politicians of the time, Newton pays particular attention to the widespread and vehement opposition to the war, both inside parliament and in the country at large, and reveals how Asquith, Edward Grey and Winston Churchill colluded, against the wishes and instincts of many of their parliamentary colleagues, to bring the country into the war, by any means necessary. Douglas Newton was in conversation with Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers, on 4 August, the hundredth anniversary of Britain's declaration of war on Germany.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nigel Smith, currently Professor of Ancient and Modern Literature at Princeton, was in conversation about the thought, literature and legacy of the Ranters with Sir Stephen Sedley, formerly a judge in the Court of Appeal, frequent contributor to the LRB and an acknowledged authority on the history of English radicalism. Folk singer Leon Rosselson performed two of his songs at the event: 'Abiezer Coppe' and 'The Diggers'.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Best known in Britain for her award-winning novel Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels is also an acclaimed poet. Her latest collection, Correspondences, shortlisted for the 2014 Griffin Prize, is an extraordinary and utterly sui generis collaboration with painter Bernice Eisenstein. In a unique, accordion-style format, Michaels’s resonant book-length poem, a historical and personal elegy, unfolds on one side of the book’s pages. On the other, and in unison, Bernice Eisenstein's haunting portraits depict the 20th century writers and thinkers the poem summons: Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, W.G. Sebald, Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi and others, each accompanied by quotations that illuminate the deeper connections among them. Anne Michaels joined us for an evening of readings and discussion in conversation with Gareth Evans, publisher of Railtracks, Michaels’s meditative dialogue with John Berger, produced in association with the bookshop in 2011. With thanks to Ledbury Poetry Festival.  See acast.com/privacy for pr

Geoff Dyer’s latest book Another Great Day at Sea (Visual Editions), illustrated with the photographs of Chris Steele-Perkins, recounts daily life aboard an American aircraft carrier the USS George H. W. Bush, on which Dyer spent time as a kind of writer in residence. Philip Hoare wrote of it in the Guardian: ‘This is beautiful writing. It is urgent, funny, utterly in-the-moment and achingly honest. … Like the captain, like the crew, like the ship, Dyer's superb book constantly reiterates its excellence. It virtually stands to attention on its own.’ Geoff Dyer came to the Bookshop to speak about the project with Chris Mitchell.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Leslie Jamison’s essays deal with illness, art, running, loss, the female body and everything else besides. She joined us at the shop to discuss her work with the author Olivia Laing. The conversation touched on artificial sweeteners, the essay as a form and the difficulties of writing about pain.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'The first thing you find out in any textbook about maps is that they don't work. There's no such thing as a good map.' What is a map? And what is a map’s relation to the real world? In Mapping it Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies (Thames and Hudson) a stellar cast of modern artists, architects, scientists and theorists, including Yoko Ono, Mona Hatoum, Tim Berners-Lee, Anish Kapoor and Damien Hirst, reimagine, vertiginously, the visual techniques we use for representing space, time and reality. Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator, art critic and the originator of the project, joined us at the Bookshop in conversation with the novelist Tom McCarthy, who provided the introduction to the book.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Film-maker, graphic designer, animator, cartoonist, photographer, internet and new media pioneer, installationist, novelist, critic, publisher – the French artist Chris Marker, who died in 2012 on the day of his 91st birthday, was as versatile as he was prolific. He is best known for his film masterpieces Sans Soleil and La Jetée (the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys) but his influence has been felt, perhaps even more keenly since his death, in almost every field of artistic endeavour. In an evening of readings, screenings and discussion, Chris Darke, critic and co-curator of the first retrospective of Chris Marker’s work across all media, was in conversation with the acclaimed cultural commentator and essayist Brian Dillon about Marker’s writing in all forms, from little known novels and short stories through essays and critical pieces to his outstanding film scripts. The evening was hosted by Gareth Evans, Film Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery. The event was presented with thanks to, and in

Almost a century after Einstein first proposed it, the full ramifications of the General Theory of Relativity are still being debated. Pedro Ferreira is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and his new book The Perfect Theory brings to life both the science and the scientific controversies which have surrounded the General Theory since its conception. Pedro was at the Bookshop in conversation with Marcus du Sautoy, who wrote of him: ‘You couldn't ask for a better guide to the outer reaches of the universe and the inner workings of the minds of those who've navigated it.’ Their discussion ranged over the origins and implications of the theory - from black holes to time travel - and explored where research into general relativity might take us in the future.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel The Blazing World (Sceptre) artist Harriet Burden, consumed by fury at the lack of recognition she has received from the New York art establishment, embarks on an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts who exhibit her work as their own, to universal acclaim. ‘All intellectual endeavours’ Burden herself remarks pugnaciously at the novel’s opening ‘fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work … it can locate a cock and a pair of balls.’ Siri Hustvedt was joined in conversation by the art critic Sarah Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World. The pair discussed the book's themes of art, gender bias and subterfuge, lighting upon neuroscience, the nature of celebrity and wine-tasting along the way.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Berger came to the Bookshop to celebrate the life and work of Aimé Césaire on the occasion of Archipelago's reissue of Césaire's long poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1936). Born in Martinique in 1913, Césaire was one of the founding voices of the négritude movement in Francophone literature. He considered this work his “break into the forbidden,” at once a cry of rebellion and a celebration of black identity. The English translation by John Berger and Anya Bostock retains the visceral, lyric energy of the French original. John Berger opened the evening with a reading from Return to My Native Land, and was then joined in conversation by the poet and translator David Constantine. The pair discussed Césaire's work, exploring what it means to write in one's mother tongue and the nature of hope. Berger concluded the evening with a reading of Peter Blackman's 'Stalingrad'.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Javier Cercas rose to fame in the English-speaking world with The Soldiers of Salamis which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004 and was one of our early bestsellers. He continued his exploration of modern Spanish history with The Anatomy of a Moment, a work of non-fiction that investigated the failed coup of 1981. Now he returns to fiction with Outlaws, a fast-paced and morally complex tale of disaffected youth set in the period just after the end of the Franco dictatorship. Javier was joined in conversation by Paul Preston, Príncipe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE and author of The Spanish Holocaust.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Quoting from the letters, diaries, reviews, and essays of novelists and drawing on their biographies, Schmidt’s The Novel – A Biography (Harvard) invites us into the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the novel in English. Michael Schmidt spoke with Michael Wood, author and regular contributor to the London Review of Books, in a conversation chaired by novelist Kirsty Gunn. The discussion covered the 13-year process of writing the book, the social function of the novel, an appalling misprint involving Martin Amis and favourite reads old and new.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'The tutored and passionate eye of the director holds the space, which otherwise would be without boundary, indiscriminate and endless.' Since making her first film at the age of 14, Sally Potter has established herself as one of Britain's leading directors – of dance and theatre as well as of cinema. In her new book, Naked Cinema (Faber),she strips bare the art of directing actors for the camera. Potter has always been noted for her extraordinary rapport with performers, and for her ability to coax extraordinary performances out of them. Here she leads the reader through the film-making process, from casting to screening, always placing the actor at the heart of her account. Concrete examples are provided by a series of revealing interviews with actors she has worked with, including Julie Christie, with whom she worked on her first feature film The Gold Diggers, Annette Bening (Ginger and Rosa) and Jude Law who dragged up for her in Rage. Sally spoke about her book and her career with Gareth Evans, The White

Following the hugely enjoyable launch event last year for [*The Flamethrowers*][1], Rachel Kushner returned to the shop to mark the UK publication (by Vintage) of her first novel [*Telex From Cuba*][2], set among the American expatriate community on the eve of Castro's revolution. Rachel was in conversation with Robert Collins, Deputy Editor of the *Sunday Times* and an early champion of *The Flamethrowers*. The pair explored the history of United Fruit Yellow, how best to throw a hand grenade, and the mysterious character of Rachel K...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In his new book, 'Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism' (Profile), David Harvey unravels the paradoxes at the heart of capitalism – its drive, for example, to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it; its imperative to use labour-saving technologies that leave consumers bereft of adequate means of consumption; and its compulsion to exploit nature to the point of extinction. Such are the tensions that underpin the persistence of mass unemployment, the downward spirals of Europe and Japan, and China’s and India’s unstable lurches in uncertain directions. Not that these contradictions are all destructive in the short term: they produce the crises through which capitalism has historically reconstituted itself in new guises. But can capitalism survive in the long run by staggering from crisis to crisis? David was in conversation with Owen Jones, author of 'Chavs' (Verso).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.