London Review Bookshop Podcasts

Three of the best new poets in years were reading in the Bookshop. Helen Mort’s *[Division Street][1]* (Chatto) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize (almost unheard of for a debut collection) and the Costa Prize; Liz Berry’s *[Black Country][2]* (Chatto) won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; and Sarah Howe’s just-released *[Loop of Jade][3]* (Chatto) is shortlisted for the same award. United by a strong sense of place, any one of them on their own would be worth turning out for – on a rare triple-bill, presenting an evening of poetry and conversation, they’re unmissable.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steven Nightingale's Granada: The Light of Andalucía (Nicholas Brealey) is a rhapsodic celebration of one of Spain's most beautiful and fascinating cities, and his adoptive home. From the extraordinary flourishing of Granada under the Moors, when it became the effective cultural and philosophical capital of the known world, through the horrific ethnic cleansing of the 15th and 16th centuries, to the tragedy of Civil War and one of the city's most famous sons Federico GarcÍa Lorca in the 20th century, Nightingale's account is as captivating and digressive as the tangled streets of El Albayzín itself. Steven Nightingale was in conversation with the historian of Arabic literature Robert Irwin, whose study of Granada's most famous landmark, The Alhambra, is published by Profile.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Israeli author Etgar Keret has been described by Clive James as 'one of the most important writers alive', by Salman Rushdie as 'A brilliant writer ...The voice of the next generation' and by the New York Times as 'A genius.' Keret is mainly celebrated for his short – often very short – stories, but he has also written graphic novels, and screenplays for film and television. Etgar Keret joined us at the shop to read from and talk about his latest book The Seven Good Years (Granta), a darkly absurd memoir of the author's recent past that ruminates on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind 'Angry Birds', and whose anti-hero is a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to pursue Keret to, and possibly beyond, the grave. He was in conversation with the novelist Naomi Alderman, whose most recent novel The Liars' Gospel is published by Penguin.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Two very different books, Iain Sinclair’s Black Apples of Gower and Brian Catling’s The Vorrh share a measure of common ground: the Cave of Origin (in which all narratives fester and cook). The two writers discuss and read from their work.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Over the past two decades Carcanet’s New Poetries anthologies have been discovering the best new poets in English, and have provided readers with their first taste of authors such as Sophie Hannah, Patrick McGuinness, David Morley and Sinéad Morrissey. To celebrate the publication of New Poetries VI we hosted an evening of readings by some of the featured poets; Jee Leong Koh, Rebecca Watts, Joey Connolly, Vahni Capildeo and (our very own) John Clegg.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alice in Wonderland is 150 years old this year. To celebrate her anniversary we have invited Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and Fellow of Magdalen College, to talk about his latest book The Story of Alice (Harvill Secker), a triple biography of Caroll's Alice books, of their subject Alice Liddell, and their creator Charles Dodgson. Douglas-Fairhurst will be in conversation with Vanessa Tait, author of The Looking Glass House (Atlantic), and the great grand-daughter of Alice Liddell.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In On Elizabeth Bishop novelist and essayist Colm Tóibín provides a deeply personal meditation on one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, and one who has had a powerful influence on his own work. ‘Above all,’ writes Saskia Hamilton, ‘he honours Bishop’s exact ways with language, and his sifting of what is said from what is unsaid in her poetry illuminates his own watchful and patient art as a novelist.’ Tóibín joined us at the shop to talk about Elizabeth Bishop with the poet and critic Ruth Padel whose most recent collection, Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth, was published by Chatto in 2014.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

'The more conscious a work of art is of its audience, the more curated it becomes.' ‘Curation’ has become a buzzword, applied to everything from music festivals to artisanal cheese. Inside the art world, the curator reigns supreme, acting as the face of high-profile group shows in a way that can eclipse the contributions of individual artists. At the same time, curatorial-studies programs continue to grow, and businesses are adopting curation as a means of adding value to content. David Balzer joined us at the Bookshop in conversation with Zoe Pilger, author of Eat My Heart Out (Serpent's Tail). The pair discussed Balzer's new book, Curationism (Pluto Press), and questioned: what is a curator, exactly?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alberto Manguel is a Canadian writer, translator, editor and critic, but most of all, he is a reader. In his latest book Curiosity (Yale) Manguel guides us through the history of questioning using the authors he has particularly valued in his own reading life – among them Aquinas, Montaigne, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson and, pre-eminently, Dante. Alberto Manguel joined us at the Bookshop to speak about his book, and about the pleasures, dangers and rewards of reading, with John Sutherland, Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The May General Election looks likely to be the closest in a generation. But what happens after it? The gap between the two main parties is narrower than ever, and their share of the vote in the election is set to reach a new low. What hope is there that in these conditions, a progressive agenda will re-emerge in British political life? What forces – economic, social, environmental – are likely to shape the landscape of British politics over the next five years, or the next twenty? Can the centre hold, or will we see a fragmentation and radicalisation of politics? Aaron Bastani, founder of Novaramedia.com, Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural and political theory at University of East London and author of Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in the Age of Individualism and Zoe Williams, Guardian columnist and author of Get it Together: Why We Deserve Better Politics joinined Paul Myerscough of the London Review of Books to discuss the future of British politics.  See acast.com/privacy for priv

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.