London Review Bookshop Podcast

Latest Episodes:

On Ukraine: with Andrey Kurkov, Oksana Zabuzhko, Robert Chandler, James Meek, Peter Pomerantsev, Ilya Kaminsky, and Lyuba Yakimchuk Oct 05, 2022

Show notes

Andrey Kurkov is the celebrated Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin and 18 other novels. His letters from Ukraine about his family’s flight from Kyiv became essential daily listening on the Today programme in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion.

Two weeks after the Russian invasion began, Kurkov was joined by Oksana Zabuzhko, Robert Chandler, James Meek, Ilya Kaminsky, and Lyuba Yakimchuk for a special event chaired by Peter Pomerantsev.

All the proceeds from ticket sales were donated to the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital, an NGO coordinating the provision of medical care by civilian doctors on the Ukrainian front line.

Find more upcoming LRB Bookshop events via the website: lrb.me/eventspod

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Juliet Jacques with Owen Jones: Front Lines Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

In her journalism Juliet Jacques writes about art, literature, culture and politics from a distinctive trans perspective. Front Lines (Cipher Press) collects seminal pieces written between 2007 and 2020. Juliet Jacques writes in her introduction ‘I never believed any journalism was objective, nor that there was any point in even trying to be. Above all, activism is needed to fight this, with journalism to support it: there is no point in pretending to be objective in our work, as the stakes remain just as high as they were back in 2010, perhaps even higher.’ Jacques is in in conversation with journalist Owen Jones.

Find more upcoming events at the Bookshop here: http://lrb.me/upcomingevents

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Victoria Adukwei Bulley & André Naffis-Sahely: Quiet/High Desert Sep 21, 2022

Show notes

Two exciting young poets were at the shop to read from and talk about their work. Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s debut poetry collection Quiet (Faber) circles around ideas of Black interiority, intimacy and selfhood. ‘This book is a seismic event,’ writes Kayo Chingonyi. ‘Its vibrations will be felt for a long time to come.’

Editor of Poetry London André Naffis-Sahely’s second collection High Desert (Bloodaxe) is a psychedelic journal of end-times and an ode to the American Southwest, encompassing wildfires, Spanish colonial history, racial tensions and the recent pandemic.

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Geoff Dyer & Mark Ford: The Last Days of Roger Federer Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

As he enters late middle age, Geoff Dyer turns, in The Last Days of Roger Federer, to the question of late – or, indeed, last – style. Lisa Appignanesi writes, ‘Geoff Dyer's wry meditations on mortality and late style have a dazzling way of dispelling gloom. Nietzsche and the Turin horse, vaporised Turner, dolorous Dylan, antics on courts and at Burning Man, Dyer's Last Days had me laughing aloud, a sure signal of deft seriousness. What is there to say except if this is late Dyer, it's great Dyer.’ Geoff is in conversation with the poet and critic Mark Ford.

Find more upcoming events at the Bookshop here: http://lrb.me/upcomingevents

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Orwell Prize Shortlist Readings: Yara Rodrigues Fowler & Isabel Waidner Sep 07, 2022

Show notes

Since 2019, the Orwell Prize has celebrated the best in contemporary political fiction. Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Isabel Waidner, both on the prize’s 2022 shortlist, are in conversation with Sana Goyal, one of this year’s judges, talking about their novels there are more things and Sterling Karat Gold – books which not only take political issues as subject-matter but enact radical politics through their form.

Find more upcoming events at the Bookshop here: lrb.me/upcomingevents

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Édouard Louis & Tash Aw: A Woman's Battles and Transformations Aug 31, 2022

Show notes

‘Everything started with a photo. To see her free, hurtling fulsomely towards the future, made me think back to the life she shared with my father. Seeing the photo reminded me that those twenty years of devastation were not anything natural but were the result of external forces - society, masculinity, my father - and that things could have been otherwise.’

Édouard Louis’s tender memoir of his mother is an exquisite portrait of womanhood, motherhood, the trials of both and the transcendent, fragile joy of eventual liberation. Louis, one of the leading French writers of his generation, discussed A Woman's Battles and Transformations (Harvill Secker) with its English translator the novelist Tash Aw, winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award for The Harmony Silk Factory and author most recently of We, The Survivors.

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Seán Hewitt & Andrew McMillan: All Down Darkness Wide Aug 24, 2022

Show notes

Seán Hewitt’s debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (Cape), won the Laurel Prize in 2020; Max Porter praised it for its reverence to the natural world and ‘gorgeous wisdom’, both of which are apparent in his new book, All Down Darkness Wide, a unique memoir of queer longing, trauma and depression.

Hewitt talks to Andrew McMillan, whose debut collection, physical (Cape), was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. His most recent book, pandemonium, was published in 2021.

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Andrew Mellor and James Jolly: ‘The Northern Silence’ Aug 17, 2022

Show notes

At one time something of a backwater in the musical world, over the past few decades Scandinavia has become a musical powerhouse, encompassing all genres from Esa-Pekka Salonen to Björk. Copenhagen-based music journalist Andrew Mellor has travelled from Reykjavik to Rovaniemi to investigate the glories and the dark side of Nordic music, encountering composers, performers and audiences and to explore our complex fascination with the unique culture of the north.

He was in conversation with James Jolly, radio presenter and former editor of Gramophone.

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Anna Aslanyan & Daniel Trilling on translation in reportage Aug 10, 2022

Show notes

Two journalists with a multilingual background – Anna Aslanyan, the author of Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History, and Daniel Trilling, the author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe – examine the role translation plays in reportage.

News is an international commodity, subject to constant translation and retranslation as journalists frame, adapt and contextualise their source material to match their target audience. There is a curious contradiction between the right to information and the disinformation that results from it, precipitated by time pressure. Most journalism is done in a hurry, but is being the first to bring your readers a story from a distant part of the world worth the risk of spreading fake news?

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Elif Batuman & Merve Emre: Either/Or Aug 03, 2022

Show notes

Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed and The Idiot, joined us to read from and talk about her latest novel Either/Or. International travel, Harvard, Hungary and of course literature and philosophy collide in a heart-breaking and hilarious coming-of-age story by one of our most consistently thought-provoking writers.

She was in conversation with Merve Emre, associate professor of English at the University of Oxford, author of several works of non-fiction and most recently the annotator of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

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