London Review Bookshop Podcasts

After the death of her partner of thirty-two years, Lisa Appignanesi was thrust into a state striated by rage and superstition in which sanity felt elusive. In Everyday Madness (4th Estate) Appignanesi explores her own and society’s experience of grieving, the effects of loss and the potent, mythical space it occupies in our lives. Appignanesi was in conversation with Lara Feigel, author of Free Woman (Bloomsbury).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb Danny Dorling presents the evidence that in 2018 the growth in UK income inequality may have finally peaked. Inequality began growing in the 1970s and the damaging repercussions may continue long after the peak is passed. There will be speculation and a little futurology. Danny was in conversation with Faiza Shaheen, director of the think tank CLASS and former Head of Inequality and Sustainable Development at Save the Children UK. Faiza recently explained that the rich, like viruses, also develop resistance, in their case to redistributive taxes. They use their wealth and power to carve out tax loopholes and lower tax rates. Their fortunes balloon. Inequality grows. In which case why should inequality peak now?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Does the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevent it from genuinely understanding Russia? In Russia Without Putin (Verso), LRB contributor and Russophile Tony Wood argues that the core features of Putinism—a predatory, authoritarian elite presiding over a vastly unequal society—are integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism, a legacy of Yeltsinism rather than a resurgence of Soviet authoritarianism. Tony Wood was in conversation with James Meek, LRB Contributing Editor and author of Private Island (Verso).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

‘Like Björk and FKA Twigs, Norwegian artist Jenny Hval presents a version of female sexuality in which carnal impulses, anxieties and the female/male perspective are often knotted together.’ The Guardian As a musician and artist, Jenny Hval is renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery, and in her debut novel, Paradise Rot (Verso) she presents a hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire, where the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. ‘As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician,’ says Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, ‘Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder.’ Hval was in conversation with Laura Snapes, deputy music editor at the Guardian.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is it about the particularities of painting that has allowed artists to explore, in a variety of ways and with a sometimes surprising degree of freedom, the vexed relations between the mundane and the celestial? In his latest book Heaven on Earth (Thames and Hudson) art historian T.J. Clark draws on examples from Giotto to Picasso to provide an exciting new history of the depiction of the divine. Professor Clark will be in conversation with LRB contributing editor Jeremy Harding.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Living With Buildings (Profile), Iain Sinclair embarks on a series of expeditions – through London, Marseille, Mexico and the Outer Hebrides. He explores the relationship between sickness and structure, and between art, architecture, social planning and health, taking plenty of detours along the way. Walking is Sinclair's defensive magic against illness and, as he moves, he observes his surroundings: stacked tower blocks and behemoth estates; halogen-lit glasshouse offices and humming hospitals; the blackened hull of a Spitalfields church and the floating mass of Le Corbusier's radiant city. Sinclair was in conversation with Patrick Wright, Professor of Literature and Visual & Material Culture, Kings College London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Democracy Hacked, Martin Moore examines how our own fragile political systems are being gamed by authoritarian states, shadowy hackers and unaccountable social media firms. Is our democracy more vulnerable than we realise? Can these sinister think-fluencers be reined in, and what can we do to restabilise and secure our political sphere? Martin Moore was in conversation with David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge and author of, most recently, How Democracy Ends.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ben Marcus is one of contemporary American fiction’s most masterful writers. His new book of short stories, Notes from the Fog (Granta), is an emotional handbook to the baffling times we live in; a cabinet of brain-rearranging stories which are both horrifyingly strange and deeply touching. From parent/child relationships thrown off kilter to scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left-alone bodies to new scientific frontiers, Marcus is the a chronicler of the present uncanny and the peculiar future. He was in discussion with Eley Williams, author of Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marina Warner’s new collection of essays, Forms of Enchantment (Thames and Hudson), collects her writing on art from 1988 to the present, including pieces on (among others) Louise Bourgeois, Joan Jonas and Paula Rego. She brings to artists and artworks the same anthropological and mythological approach which informs her previous books, including Stranger Magic, From Beast to Blonde and Monuments and Maidens, arguing that the social position filled by art and aesthetics is increasingly best understood in terms of magic. Warner was in conversation with Eleanor Birne, author and contributor to the London Review of Books.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard Powers, one of America’s greatest novelists, often compared to Pynchon and Roth, read from and talked about his twelfth novel ‘The Overstory’ (Heinemann). Powers has always been remarkable for the seriousness with which he takes science and nature and their intersections with literature, and in ‘The Overstory’, which stretches in time and place from antebellum New York to the Pacific North West timber wars in the late 20th century, he provides us with an arboreal equivalent to Moby Dick, and a book that will permanently change – and for the better – the way you view the world around you. Powers was in conversation with the novelist Benjamin Markovits.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world - changing it almost beyond recognition. In his new book, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight (Penguin) Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx's prediction that 'all that is solid melts into air.' With the automation of work, the virtualisation of money, the dissipation of class communities and the rise of immaterial, intellectual labour, the global capitalist edifice is beginning to crumble, more quickly than ever before-and it is now on the verge of vanishing entirely. But what will come next? Against a backdrop of constant socio-technological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? Zizek was in conversation with William Davies, author of Nervous States (Jonathan Cape).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What is the meaning of time? Is there such a thing as the present? How can we reconcile our intuitions on the subject with the scientific overturnings of the 20th century? Who better to examine these questions than Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons in Physics, Reality is Not What It Seems, and most recently, The Order of Time (Allen Lane). Dubbed ‘the poet of modern physics’ by John Banville, Rovelli's work combines expert knowledge with charm, wisdom and consolation. Carlo Rovelli was in conversation with Pedro Ferreira, author of The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity (Abacus).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood 'science'. In *Seven Types of Atheism* (Allen Lane) John Gray describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its 'opposite'. Gray was in conversation with author and essayist Adam Phillips.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Out of My Head tells the highly personal and often surprisingly funny story of Tim Parks' quest to discover more about consciousness. It seems not a day goes by without a discussion on whether computers can be conscious, whether our universe is some kind of simulation, whether the mind is unique to humans or spread out across the universe. Out of My Head aims to explore these ideas via metaphysical considerations and laboratory experiments in terms we can all understand and invites us to see space, time, colour and smell, sounds and sensations in an entirely new way. Parks was in conversation with Laurence Scott, author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality (Heinemann).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hilton Als was at the shop to discuss his second book of essays White Girls (Penguin) with writer and journalist Bridget Minamore. In thirteen astonishing portraits New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als limns the vital subjects of race, sexuality and gender under the general heading of ‘White Girls’, a heading that is for him expansive enough to include Flannery O’Connor, Eminem, Truman Capote and Malcolm X. Reminiscent of James Baldwin at his best and most wicked, Hilton Als leaves no precious stone unturned nor any sacred cow unscathed in his mission to inform, enlighten and entertain. Read, listen, enjoy and learn.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In ‘Trans-Europe Express’, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it. Hatherley was at the Bookshop in conversation with Lynsey Hanley, author of ‘Estates: An Intimate History’ (Granta) and ‘Respectable: The Experience of Class’ (Penguin).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The refugee crisis that hit the headlines in 2015 and 2016 has largely gone out of the news. Yet refugees continue to risk their lives on a daily basis in the attempt to reach Europe. Most of those who make it face extraordinary difficulties getting their claims for asylum accepted. This is one of the most serious humanitarian disasters to unfold in Europe in recent decades; yet the EU and its members have largely focused on deterring migrants. What can we learn from the refugees’ stories? And where do we stand, as Europeans whose governments seek to dissuade would-be refugees from leaving their homelands? Teresa Thornhill, author of Hara Hotel (Verso), and Daniel Trilling, author of Lights in the Distance (Picador), were joined in conversation by Marchu Girma of Women for Refugee Women and journalist Ziad Ghandour.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Four of poetry's liveliest new voices – A.K. Blakemore, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Amy Key and Zaffar Kunial – joined us for an evening of readings hosted by Martha Sprackland of Offord Road Books.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy was at the shop to read from and talk about her latest book The Cost of Living (Hamish Hamilton), the second part in her ‘Living Autobiography’ trilogy that began with Things I Don’t Want to Know. An exhilarating feminist manifesto for change, The Cost of Living is Levy’s conversation with Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and reveals a writer at the height of her powers. She was in conversation with Olivia Laing, author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, whose first novel Crudo was published by Picador in June.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Over six winter days in upstate New York the Querry family, its members variously afflicted by painful divorce, bereavement and depression, wrestle with life’s fundamental questions. Why do some people find living so much harder than others? Is happiness a skill that can be learned, or a lucky accident of birth? Is reflection helpful to happiness or an obstacle to it? Profoundly moving and quietly humorous, Wood’s second novel is, as Rebecca Adams wrote in the Financial Times, ‘stubbornly true to life.’ Wood read from Upstate (Cape), and discussed it with the audience.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.