Last week, we were joined in the bookshop by Annabelle Hirsch whose new book A History of Women in 101 Objects not only gives us an untold and innovative history of the world— a history takes us from the dawn of civilisation to the present day, through ancient Egypt, medieval Venice, revolutionary France and the roaring twenties—but also launches an interrogation into the practice and the purpose of history itself: how and why it’s told, who gets to tell it, and what gets cast into the shadows along the way. Buy A History of Women in 101 Objects: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/a-history-of-women-in-101-objectsAnnabelle Hirsch, born in 1986, has German and French roots. She studied art history, dramatics and philosophy in Munich and Paris, and works as a cultural journalist for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and various other magazines. She writes short stories and translates French literature. She lives between Rome and Berlin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In advance of their event at Shakespeare and Company this February 8th, poets Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen answer our café’s Proust Questionnaire. Be warned, this gets saucy quickly…Find out more about their event here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/events/hollie-mcnish-michael-pedersen*Hollie McNish is an award-winning poet, writer and performer.She is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Slug (and other things I’ve been told to hate) and won the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry with her poetry and parenting memoir Nobody Told Me. She has two further poetry collections, Plum and Cherry Pie, one modern adaptation of the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone and alongside fellow poet Sabrina Mahfouz, co-wrote Offside, a play relating the history of UK women’s football. She loves writing and her live readings are not to be missed.Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author, and the current Writer in Residence at The University of Edinburgh. He’s published three acclaimed collections of poetry, with the title poem from his third, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, currently shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prizes. His prose debut, Boy Friends, was published by Faber & Faber in 2022 to rave reviews in the UK and North America and was a Sunday Times Critics Choice. Pedersen has won a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and John Mather’s Trust Rising Star of Literature Award. His work has attracted praise from the likes of Stephen Fry, Kae Tempest, Irvine Welsh, Shirley Manson, Maggie Smith and many more. He also co-founded the prize-winning literary collective Neu! Reekie!.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our Bloomcasters reconvene on January 6th, “Joycension Day”, to discuss The Dead : the final piece in Joyce’s Dubliners, described by T. S. Eliot as "one of the greatest short stories ever written". Leaning heavily as always on the wisdom of honorary Bloomcasters Declan Kiberd and Colm Toibin, they cover orchestrated dinner parties, ego death, the circularity of human life, the music of words, and much more.Carrying forth a Bloomcast tradition, they also play a festive game, populating competing dinner parties with characters from Dubliners and Ulysses.Happy New Year (and Joycension Day)!*Mentioned in the podcast:‘The Dead’, by James Joyce: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dubliners/The_DeadProf. Declan Kiberd, ‘Dubliners: The First 100 Years,’ at the James Joyce Center (2014):https://youtu.be/A5qhK7LH6co?si=1zFc7EH7AOpuL1mqDubliners, with an introduction by Colm Toibin (Canongate): https://canongate.co.uk/books/1488-dubliners/London Review of Books. ‘Arruginated’, by Colm Toibin: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n17/colm-toibin/arruginatedJohn Huston’s 1987 film adaptation of ‘The Dead’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkos62UPwVk“The Lass of Aughrim,” from the Huston film:https://youtu.be/I1CP5Lz2iHE?si=yfxE-koZ3PVngWIcAnnie Baker’s Infinite Life: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/infinite-life/ Circles by Ralph Waldo Emerson: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2944/2944-h/2944-h.htm#link2H_4_0010  *Alice McCrum is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Princeton University. Before starting her graduate work, Alice lived in Paris, where she taught at the Sorbonne, studied public policy at Sciences Po-Paris, and directed cultural programming at the American Library in Paris. Lex Paulson is Director of Executive Programs at the UM6P School of Collective Intelligence (Morocco) and lectures in advocacy and human rights at Sciences Po-Paris. Trained in classics and community organizing, he served as mobilization strategist for the campaigns of Barack Obama in 2008 and Emmanuel Macron in 2017. He served as legislative counsel in the 111th U.S. Congress (2009-2011), organized on six U.S. presidential campaigns, and has worked to advance democratic innovation at the European Commission and in India, Tunisia, Egypt, Uganda, Senegal, Czech Republic and Ukraine. He is author of Cicero and the People’s Will: Philosophy and Power at the End of the Roman Republic, from Cambridge University Press, and is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy and Governance.Adam Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. In 2022, he conceived and presented Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses—an epic, polyphonic celebration of James Joyce’s masterwork. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2016. It was published by Editions Grasset in France in 2018 to great critical acclaim. His second novel, Beasts of England, was published in September 2023 by Galley Beggar Press, and will be published in 2025 by Editions Grasset. It was selected as a "2023 highlight" by The Guardian. A collection of his conversations with writers, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews, was published by Canongate in October 2023 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode we’re discussing The Possessed, the great, almost-lost novel by Witold Gombrowicz, arguably Poland’s greatest modernist writer. The Possessed is a Gothic-infused romp set in the roaring twenties, centred around an uncanny love story between Maja, an upper class tennis player, and her coach Leszczuk, but also featuring a haunted castle, lost treasure, and a mad prince…as every good Gothic novel should.It has been published by Fitzcarraldo in a lively and highly-readable translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and with a sharp-witted and insightful introduction by Adam Thirlwell, who join us to discuss it. Buy The Possessed: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-possessed-2*Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists and reportage authors, as well as crime fiction, poetry and children's books. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize.Adam Thirlwell is the author of four novels. His work has been translated into thirty languages, while his awards include a Somerset Maugham Award and the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Adam is joined by Naomi Klein, whose new book, Doppelganger is somehow both the most personal and the most all-encompassing of her works to date. Beginning with the highly destabilising, but very intimate experience of repeatedly being mistaken for someone else—someone whose beliefs are, in most respects, fundamentally different to Klein’s—it expands into a penetrating analysis of the “Mirror World”—that place populated with rightwing agitators, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and wellness influencers which, if you squint just the right amount, can end up looking not too dissimilar to your everyday reality.Buy Doppelganger here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/doppelganger-2*Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and international and New York Times bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed books: How To Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Earth and Each Other (2021), On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019), No Is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014), The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and No Logo (2000). In 2018, she published The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On the Disaster Capitalists (2018) reprinted from her feature article for The Intercept with all royalties donated to Puerto Rican organisation juntegente.org. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by Claire-Louise Bennett for a wide-ranging conversation, orbiting around Nightflowers, her immersive installation at Museum of Literature Ireland. They discuss writing, thought processes, class, Huysmans, Ann Quin, the imagination, home, the poetics of space . . . and much, much more.Find out more about Nightflowers here: https://moli.ie/nightflowers/*Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book, Pond, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Claire-Louise's fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including White Review, Stinging Fly, gorse, Harper's Magazine, Vogue Italia, Music & Literature, and New York Times Magazine.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Set in a near future in which a mysterious smog has enveloped the world, devastating crops and biodiversity, the narrator of Land of Milk and Honeytakes a job as a chef at an isolated mountain colony, run by a wealthy entrepreneur and his daughter, a visionary scientist. However, what she first takes to be little more than a decadent end-times holiday camp for the perennially wealthy, she soon discovers is much more ambitious, and potentially much more sinister.Buy Land of Milk and Honey: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/land-of-milk-and-honey-3Born in Beijing, C Pam Zhang is mostly an artifact of the United States. She is the author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold, winner of the Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, nominated for the Booker Prize, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, McSweeney’s Quarterly, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo Ann Beard’s essays are surprising, insightful, thoughtful, and contains something new in each and every sentence. Recently published in the UK as The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard they combine the stylistic flair and pace of fiction, with the ineffable weight of the factual, creating in the reader a rare and profound sense of empathy. 'Too good... You should read her and not look away' Anne Enright, Guardian'The stories are essays, the essays are stories. Even when they are not literally true, they contain the kind of truth that great fiction thrives on' The Times'Literature's best kept secret' IndependentBuy The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-collected-works-of-jo-ann-beardBuy Cheri: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/cheri-3Jo Ann Beard is the author the collections Festival Days and The Boys of My Youth, and the novel In Zanesville. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and others, and has received a Whiting Foundation Award, fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2022 Award in Literature. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you thought life on Airstrip one was tough for Winston Smith, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Because in JULIA, Sandra Newman’s reimagining of Orwell’s nightmare, if men have it hard, you can bet women have it harder. Taking the roughly sketched character of Julia—Winston’s love interest and possible betrayer—Sandra Newman gives her a surname, a history, a life of her own. In short, she breathes a soul into her. And in doing so, not only does she allow readers to revisit 1984 with new eyes but creates a novel that stands tall in its own terrifying pair of jackboots.Buy Julia: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/julia-3SANDRA NEWMAN is the author of The Country of Ice Cream Star (Longlisted for the Women's Prize), The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award), Cake, The Heavens and The Men. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia Creative Writing programme and lives in New York.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode Adam is joined by John Freeman to bid farewell to his game-changing literary journal Freeman’s. They discuss the pleasures and challenges faced in setting up and running a magazine John’s editorial philosophy, some of his favourite events, and why the final issue’s theme of “Conclusions” offers up more surprising avenues than readers might expect. The episode also features readings from Sandra Cisneros, Aleksandar Hemon, Rebecca Makkai, and Mieko Kawakami read by translator Hitomi YoshioBuy Freeman’s Conclusions: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/freemans-conclusionsFeaturing new work from Rebecca Makkai, Aleksandar Hemon, Louise Erdrich, Mieko Kawakami and more, the tenth and final instalment of the boundary-pushing literary journal Freeman's explores all the ways of coming to an end.John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include Dictionary of the Undoing, How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Americas, and Tales of Two Planets. His poetry includes the collections Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. In 2021, he edited the anthologies There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love with Tracy K. Smith, and The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story. An executive editor at Knopf, he also hosts the California Book Club, a monthly online discussion of a new classic in Golden State literature for Alta magazine. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review and has been translated into twenty-two languages.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Adam was joined in the writer’s studio by Marie Darrieussecq, whose latest book Sleepless (translated by Penny Hueston and published by Fitzcarraldo) is one writer’s attempt to describe, understand, and perhaps overcome her insomnia. The passages in Sleepless that take us into the mind of the insomniac are somewhat like the experience of insomnia itself— at times fragmented and hynopgogic, at others dazzlingly alert and perceptive—while those that investigate the potential cures are captivating in their detail, description and weirdness. For those whose lives have never been blighted by insomnia, Sleepless will be a fascinating insight into this strangest and most psychologically traumatic of conditions, while those who have suffered it will find in these pages solidarity and solace.Buy Sleepless: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/sleepless-5Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969 and is recognized as one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. She has written more than twenty books. Text has published Tom Is Dead, All the Way, Men, Being Here: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker, Our Life in the Forest, The Baby and Crossed Lines. In 2013 Marie Darrieussecq was awarded the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix for her novel Men. She has written art criticism and journalism for a number of publications, including Libération and Charlie Hebdo, and is also a translator from English and has practised as a psychoanalyst. She lives in Paris.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week our host switches chairs to discuss his new novel, Beasts of England, a state-of-the-farmyard novel about back-stabbers, truth-twisters and corrupt charlatans.Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england*Manor Farm has reinvented itself as the South of England’s premium petting zoo. Now, instead of a working farm, humans and beasts alike areinvited (for a small fee) to come and stroke, fondle, and take rides on the farm’s inhabitants.But life is not a bed of roses for the animals, in spite of what their leaders may want them to believe. Elections are rigged, the community is beset by factions, and sacred mottos are being constantly updated. The Farm is descending into chaos. What’s more, a mysterious ‘illness’ has started ripping through the animals, killing them one by one…In Beasts of England, Adam Biles honours, updates and subverts George Orwell’s classic, all the while channelling the chaotic, fragmentary nature of populist politics in the Internet age into a savage farmyard satire.*Adam Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, from where he hosts their weekly podcast. In 2022, he conceived and presented Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses—an epic, polyphonic celebration of James Joyce’s masterwork. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2016, and was chosen by The Guardian as a Fiction Pick for 2016 and was a book of the year for The Observer, The Irish Times, The Millions and 3:AM Magazine. It was published by Editions Grasset in France in 2018 to great critical acclaim. His second novel, Beasts of England, will be published in September 2023 by Galley Beggar Press, and in 2025 by Editions Grasset. It was selected as a "2023 highlight" by The Guardian. A collection of his conversations with writers, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews, will be published by Canongate in October 2023.Rob Doyle was born in Dublin. His first novel, Here Are the Young Men, was chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times, Irish Times and Independent, and was among Hot Press magazine’s ‘20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016’. Doyle has adapted it for film with director Eoin Macken. Doyle also has a published collection of short stories; This is the Ritual. Doyle is the editor of the anthology The Other Irish Tradition and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Vice, TLS, Dublin Review, and many other publications, and he writes a weekly books column for the Irish Times. His newest book Threshold will be published in 2020. He teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buy Emerald Wounds: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/emerald-woundsJoyce Mansour was a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt whose fierce, macabre, erotically charged works gave André Breton’s Surrealist group a much-needed jolt after the ravages of the Second World War. Among new adherents, only Mansour wrote poems commensurate with those of Robert Desnos, René Char, Benjamin Pêret, and other poets from the movement’s heyday.Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems by Joyce Mansour is a compact yet career-spanning, bilingual anthology of this incendiary poet. With a biographical introduction by translator Emilie Moorhouse, who was drawn to Mansour’s tough, take-no-prisoners stance during the societal reckoning of the #MeToo movement, Emerald Wounds showcases the entire arc of her trajectory as a poet, from the at-once gothic and minimalist fragments of her first collection in 1953, Screams, to the serpentine power of her final poems of the 1980s. Juxtaposing the original French poems with their English translations, Mansour’s voice surges forward uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society that sees women as superficial objects of desire rather than multidimensional, autonomous subjects. Mansour is a poet the world needs today. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark O’Connell’s new book A Thread of Violence is the writer’s attempt to understand Malcolm MacArthur, the figure at the centre of one of Ireland’s most notorious crimes, and — to quote Taoiseach Charles Haughey — the “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented” events that led to the perpetrator’s eventual arrest in the home of the Irish Attorney General. It is a crime that has haunted O’Connell for decades and which leads him to meeting and getting to know the now elderly, long-freed MacArthur. As this unlikely acquaintance grows, however, O’Connell not only comes to question the possibility of ever coming to any conclusion about what actually drove this previously law-abiding local eccentric to murder two strangers in the summer of 1982, but also calls into doubt his own motivations for embarking on the project in the first place, and the risks he is taking in his own life to complete it.Buy A Thread of Violence: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/a-thread-of-violenceMark O'Connell is an award-winning Irish writer. His first book, To Be a Machine, won the 2018Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. In 2019, he became the firstever non-fiction writer to win the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second book,Notes From an Apocalypse was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. He is a contributor to the NewYork Review of Books, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker.Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Set, ostensibly, in revolutionary France, The Future Future follows Celine from young womanhood as she navigates the shifting landscape—which is being transformed as much by new media, new ways of doing business, and the discovery of new territories, as by the various political insurrections. It is a novel about how women survive in a world wrought by male violence, about language—how it shapes us and how we’re shaped by it—about friendship, about power, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the title: about time.Buy The Future Future: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-future-futureAdam Thirlwell was born in London in 1978. The author of three previous novels, his work has been translated into thirty languages. His essays appear in the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, and he is an advisory editor of the Paris Review. His awards include a Somerset Maugham Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has twice been selected by Granta as one of their Best of Young British Novelists. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds by John Higgs was first published ten years ago, self-published in fact, and quickly became a phenomenon. Ostensibly about the reasons why, in August 1994, the remnants one of the most successful, if esoteric, pop bands on the planet would torch 20 thousand 50 pound notes on the Scottish island of Jura, John Higgs quickly finds himself obliged to veer off piste — into the worlds of punk, rave, Dada, magic, Discordianism, alchemy, numerology and the very fabric of reality itself. Republished now with added reflective footnotes The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds is as wild a ride as you would want from a book about the playful, chaotic, duo at the heart of the band. Not only that, but it might also reveal what Higgs calls “one of the most important philosophical leaps of the twentieth century”…Buy The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-klfJohn Higgs is the author I HAVE AMERICA SURROUNDED, THE KLF, STRANGER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE, WATLING STREET, THE FUTURE STARTS HERE, WILLIAM BLAKE NOW, WILLIAM BLAKE VS THE WORLD and LOVE AND LET DIE. He lives in Brighton with his wife and their two children. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buy Up Late: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/up-lateReeling in the face of collapsing systems, of politics, identity and the banalities and distortions of modern living, Nick Laird confronts age-old anxieties, questions of aloneness, friendship, the push and pull of daily life. At the book's heart lies the title sequence, a profound meditation on a father's dying, the reverberations of which echo throughout in poems that interrogate inheritance and legacy, illness and justice, accounts of what is lost and what, if anything, can be retrieved. Laird is a poet capable of heading off in any and every direction, where layers of association transport us from a clifftop in County Cork to the library steps in New York's Washington Square, from a face-off between Freud and Michelangelo's Moses to one between the poet and a squirrel in a Kilburn garden. There is conflation and conflagration, rage and fire, neither of which are seen as necessarily destructive. But there is great tenderness, too, a fondness for what grows between the cracks, especially those glimpses into the unadulterated world of childhood, before the knowledge or accumulation of loss, where everything is still at stake and infinite, 'the darkness under the cattle grid'.Nick Laird was born in County Tyrone in 1975. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unique in its inventiveness, unique in its prose style, unique in its point of view and unique in its sense of humour, Isabel Waidner’s Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is a reading experience like no other. is it a mind-bending science fiction romp through uncountable dimensions? Is it an examination of how cultural artefacts shape us and are reshaped by us? Is it a cutting satire of the British class system? Is it one person’s singular quest to come to terms with themself? Is it a hilarious and painfully on target parody of the literary world? Or Is it, even, a love story? Listen on the find out…Buy Corey Fah Does Social Mobility: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/corey-fah-does-social-mobilityIsabel Waidner is a writer based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They are the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week, Adam chaired a conversation between Ben Lerner and Jakuta Alikavazovic, on the writing and translating of The Topeka School, at the conference BEN LERNER - EDGE OF GENRE. The discussion was compelling, enlightening and hilarious in equal measure. Enjoy!Buy The Topeka School: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-topeka-schoolBen Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1979. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, and is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and The Topeka School. He has published the poetry collections The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw (a finalist for the National Book Award), Mean Free Path and No Art as well as the essay The Hatred of Poetry. Lerner lives and teaches in Brooklyn.Jakuta Alikavazovic is a French writer of Bosnian and Montenegrin origins. Her debut novel, Corps Volatils, won the Prix Goncourt in 2008 for Best First Novel. She has translated works by Ben Lerner, David Foster Wallace and Anna Burns into French. She lives in Paris and writes a regular column for the daily newspaper Liberation.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch is the testament of Sonia—a horse trainer, a racetracker—who tells her story in taut vignettes, each of which contains more person, more world, more life, than a dozen pages of most contemporary novels. And what a world it is. Bruising, and brutal, where physical pain and severe injury are commonplace, a world shaped by violence and addiction, a tight-knit itinerant world of trainers, grooms, jockeys, owners, gamblers, racing secretaries, vets, and, of course—at the centre of it all—those enormous, enigmatic, empathetic beasts . . . horses.A work of fiction, based on interviews with a real-life Sonia, Kick the Latch thrums with a kind of hyper-authenticity, cracking open a closed society, placing a marginal life at its centre, and provoking a profound resonance between Sonia’s very specific struggles and joys and our own.Buy Kick the Latch: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/kick-the-latchKathryn Scanlan is the author of The Dominant Animal and lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in NOON, Granta and Fence, and is forthcoming in The Paris Review. Her story ‘The Old Mill’ was selected by Michael Cunningham for the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. She has degrees in painting, writing, and English from the University of Iowa and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her debut novel, AUG 9—FOG, a literary adaptation of a found diary, was published by FSG in 2019.Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A few weeks back we had our dear friend, Bloomsday MC, and eminent Bloomcaster Prof. Lex Paulson as a guest in the library to give a talk on Cicero, drawing on his book Cicero and the People’s Will: Philosophy and Power at the End of the Roman Republic, recently published by Cambridge University Press.Anyone who has listened to Bloomcast will know that Lex is not just a great speaker, but also a great thinker, and this talk is both an exquisite example of his work, and an insight into some of the ideas that shaped his particular and insightful approach to James Joyce’s masterwork.We were so pleased to have Lex with us that evening, and are delighted to be able to release this talk on Bloomsday. Enjoy! Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We recently spent a very special evening with 2023 Pulitzer Prizewinner Hernan Diaz, discussing TRUST, his extraordinary novel of power, greed and love.Buy Trust here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7809629/diaz-hernan-trust*A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. But now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage, and this wealthy man’s story - of greed, love and betrayal - is about to slip from his grasp. Composed of four competing versions of this deliciously deceptive tale, Trust by Hernan Diaz brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.Hernan Diaz's first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of a book of essays, and his fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Whiting Award and the winner of the William Saroyan International Prize, he has been a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Trust is his second novel. *Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Dolly Alderton stopped by for a signing we took the chance to get her to answer our Café’s Proust Questionnaire. Dolly is a self-confessed over-sharer, and this is a lot of fun!Buy Dolly Alderton's books here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/post/101/dolly-alderton-signing*If you enjoy these conversations, you can pre-order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7955486/the-shakespeare-and-company-book-of-interviews (Books will ship in September, one month before the publication date. )*Dolly Alderton is a writer and broadcaster. She has written three Sunday Times best-selling books, Everything I Know About Love, a memoir, Ghosts, a novel and Dear Dolly, collected wisdom from her Sunday Times Style Column. She wrote and executive-produced the TV adaptation of Everything I Know About Love, shown on BBC One in the UK and Peacock in the US over summer 2022. She has also hosted the number one podcasts The High Low, Love Stories and Sentimental in the City. She has written a column for The Sunday Times Style since 2015 and is their resident Agony Aunt.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Watch Us Dance—Leïla Slimani’s effervescent new novel—we rejoin the Belhaj family in 1968 a dozen years into the life on an independent Morocco. Amine and Mathilde have completed their journey from peasant farmers to paid-up members of the local bourgeoisie. Their daughter Aicha is in Strasbourg training to be a Doctor. They have just built a private swimming pool, and Amine is exploiting his position of a man of power to have extramarital affairs across the city.But these are turbulent times: students and workers, in cities all over the world, are in revolt, the consumer society is being born, and the Americans are preparing to put a man on the moon.And then there are the hippies, many of whom are washing up on the shores around in Essaouira hoping to expand their minds, and avoid the draft, during their stay in this Moroccan port.Watch Us Dance, throbs with life and colour, and Leila Slimani navigates between the macro and the micro with extraordinary authorial dexterity. It’s a novel that somehow sweeps readers up in the tides of history, while never shifting their attention from the minutiae of grievances, but also affections, that criss-cross every family.Buy Watch Us Dance: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7955500/watch-us-danceLeïla Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, she lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After the recent passing of Martin Amis, we dug out this sizzling conversation between him and Will Self at our festival in 2010. All of Amis’s brilliance, wit and thoughtfulness is on show. Enjoy! Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wish I Was Here—the new book by today’s guest M. John Harrison—is a work which resists description. Monique Roffey goes for “a deep dive into the back-and-forth, up-down sideways mind of a true genius”, Helen Macdonald plumps for “an archaeology of fragments that shivers with wholeness” while Jonathan Coe turns interrogative, asking “Is it a memoir? Is it a handbook for writers?” However the book may best be described—if the book may best be described—the fact that it appeals to writers as diverse as Coe, Roffey and Macdonald—not to mention William Gibson, who described Wish I Was Here as “hilarious and haunting”—shows not just the range of minds that M. John Harrison appeals to, but also the pervasive, if ineffable, nature of his concerns.Buy Wish I Was Here here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5998501/harrison-m-john-wish-i-was-hereM. John Harrison is the author of, among others, the Viriconium stories, The Centauri Device, Climbers, The Course of the Heart, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, Signs of Life, Light and Nova Swing. He has won the Boardman Tasker Prize (Climbers), the James Tiptree Jr Award (Light), the Arthur C. Clarke Award (Nova Swing) and the Goldsmiths Prize (The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again). He lives in Shropshire.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like all of Xiaolu Guo’s work RADICAL is difficult to describe because it’s difficult to categorise. It might be called a memoir, but it’s form makes it unlike any memoir readers may have encountered before. It’s also a fascinating reflection on language, on literature, on memory, on vagrancy, on art, on nature and on what makes a home. But perhaps the central circle in this Venn diagram of concerns is “love”, it’s different forms, how it arrives, what it does to us, and how it fares under imposed separation.Buy Radical here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7669745/guo-xiaolu-radicalXiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t Ian Dunt blows the cobwebs out of the arcane nooks and crannies of the British political system, demystifying it with his clear, compelling, and entertaining prose. He also shines a light upon how the system as it stands does not, in fact, work and, indeed, is often designed not to work. How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t leaves the reader feeling more knowledgable—as you would hope—but also angrier and more energised, more equipped to engage, to argue and perhaps even to change things for the better.Buy How Westminster Works . . . and Why it Doesn’t: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7436384/dunt-ian-how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesn-tIan Dunt spent many years working in the heart of Westminster as editor of Politics.co.uk. He is a columnist for the i newspaper, host on the Oh God What Now and Origin Story podcasts, and regularly appears as a political pundit on TV and radio. He is the author of two previous books – Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now and How to be a Liberal.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Pre-order his forthcoming novel, Beasts of England, here: https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/paperback-shop/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Biography of X is one of the most intriguing, compelling and vertigo-inducing reads of recent years. Structured and referenced like a biography—written by one CM Lucca—the central contention of the book is Lucca’s quest to unearth the origins and influences of X, the celebrated artist known by a single letter. It also calls into question how much we — as biographers, as readers, as fans, as lovers — can ever really pin down “who” anybody is at all.Buy Biography of X here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7949265/lacey-catherine-biography-of-x*In addition to Biography of X, Catherine Lacey is the author of four books: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States and Pew. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Vogue, the New York Times and elsewhere. She is a Granta Best of Young American Novelist, a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of the 2021 New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode, Adam speaks to Danny Caine, owner of Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and author of How to Resist Amazon and Why? an excoriating, enraging but ultimately empowering takedown of one of the world’s most powerful and damaging companies. Buy How to Resist Amazon and Why?: https://www.ravenbookstore.com/book/9781648411236*Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, ​Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the book How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, ​LitHub, DIAGRAM, HAD, and Barrelhouse, and his prose has appeared in LitHub and Publishers Weekly. The Midwest Independent Booksellers Association awarded him the 2019 Midwest Bookseller of the Year award. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All Your Children, Scattered by Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is about the lives lived by those in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Those who hid from it, those who fought against it, those who fled it, and those who were born into it. Telling the story of a family through the eyes of three generations—Blanche, her mother Immaculata, and her son Stokely—one of the many remarkable things about All Your Children, Scattered is how Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse is able to tell the story on a very human scale, without every overlooking the utterly monstrous and inhuman scale of the events. All Your Children, Scattered — translated by Alison Anderson — is, at its heart, a story about family, loss and the desire to return home — whatever “home” means.Buy All Your Children, Scattered: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7902877/umubyeyi-mairesse-beata-all-your-children-scattered*Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Butare, Rwanda in 1979. Surviving the genocide against the Tutsis, she moved to France in 1994 to study political science and work for humanitarian causes. She is now an acclaimed novelist and poet.Alison Anderson is a literary translator and author of three novels, Hidden Latitudes, Darwin’s Wink and The Summer Guest. She has translated over thirty novels from French, including Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the works by Nobel laureate JMG Le Clézio.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aleksandar Hemon’s new novel, The World and All That it Holds starts with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and then takes us from Bosnia, to Uzbekistan, to China and elsewhere, covering a convulsive period of history in which the technological advances, the political turbulence, and the displacement of people bear striking similarities to those of our own time. At it’s heart, though—not exactly beneath the grand sweep, but entwined with it—is a love story between two men, Pinto and Osman, and a novel that never loses sight of the fact that within beneath History, there are humans living, humans loving, humans losing and, crucially, humans coming to understand the scale at which the decisions they make can count.Buy The World and All That it Holds: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5273994/hemon-aleksandar-the-world-and-all-that-it-holds*Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo and lives in Chicago. He is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, Love and Obstacles, and The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work also appears regularly in the New Yorker and Granta, among other publications.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest for this year’s Valentine’s Special is one of the most innovative, radical and compelling writers at work today Meena Kandasamy. This year Meena returns to poetry with The Book of Desire, a new translation of the third part of the Thirukural, the foundational poem of Tamil culture. With her new version, Kandasamy offers a feminist interventionist translation that feels fresh, lively and sensual. Meena Kandasamy’s The Book of Desire is a genuine marvel.Buy The Book of Desire: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7747662/kandasamy-meena-the-book-of-desire*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Poet, novelist, activist and translator, Meena Kandasamy has published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), and the critically acclaimed novel, Gypsy Goddess. Her second novel, When I Hit You, was chosen as a book of the year by The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, and The Observer and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018. In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded International Pen’s Hermann Kesten Prize for her work as “a fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.”Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel The Hero of this Book is the profound and poignant account of one writer’s attempt to convey something of the irrepressible, indomitable, indefatigable, almost indescribable character of her recently deceased mother on the page. Although the narrator repeatedly stresses that this is a novel, and not a memoir, that’s to say neither a memoir by McCracken nor a memoir by the narrator…although what exactly the difference is between each of the two forms, and how each lends itself to the task at hand, is also an important interrogation of this extraordinary and tender book.Buy The Hero of this Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7384323/mccracken-elizabeth-the-hero-of-this-book*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Elizabeth McCracken is the award-winning author of eight books, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, The Giant's House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imag­ination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award), The Souvenir Museum and The Hero of This Book. She has received grants and fellow­ships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and she was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fic­tion at the University of Texas at Austin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by Don Paterson, multi-award winning, and much beloved poet, and now author of one of the extraordinary and refreshing memoir, TOY FIGHTS: A BOYHOOD. Charting the first two decades of the poet’s life, from his birth in Dundee to his move to London, TOY FIGHTS is a book about many things: music, class, religion, origami, money, mental illness, and family. It’s also about poetry, although perhaps in a more oblique way than the reader might be expecting.TOY FIGHTS is both uproariously funny, and yet profoundly tender, and manages to be sobecause it is stuffed with that ingredient by which any memoir succeeds or fails—authenticity. It’s also a deeply political book, although one which not only eschews ideology and facile categorisations of class, but vigorously pours scorn upon then.Buy Toy Fights: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7753105/paterson-don-toy-fights*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Don Paterson was born in Dundee in 1963. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes and, on two occasions, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and, for over twenty-five years, was Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan. He also works as a jazz musician.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special episode of the Shakespeare and Company podcast, we look back at our bookseller’s favourite reads of the year.Some of these titles were published in 2022, others just happened to rise to the top of their respective “to read” piles in the past twelve months…but they all come with the S&Co. stamp of approval.There’s something for everyone here, from a rock star’s autobiography, to a novel about a 19th century translator’s revolt, to a classic of modern science fiction that spans something like a billion earth years. Find the full list below.Sign up to our newsletter: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/subscriptionsDancing in Odessa, Ilya Kaminsky: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6316982/kaminsky-ilya-dancing-in-odessaCleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6416524/mellors-coco-cleopatra-and-frankensteinHarlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6461812/whitehead-colson-harlem-shuffleThe Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6433167/harris-nathan-the-sweetness-of-waterFrom a Low and Quiet Sea, Donal Ryan: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6871035/ryan-donal-from-a-low-and-quiet-seaTrespasses by Louise Kennedy: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6192095/louise-kennedy-kennedy-trespassesCormac McCarthy, The Passenger and Stella Maris: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5474563/mccarthy-cormac-the-passengerOpen Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6294505/nelson-caleb-azumah-open-waterBabel Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, R. F. Kuang: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6031122/kuang-r-f-babelThe Hummingbird, Sandro Veronesi: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6191021/veronesi-sandro-the-hummingbirdThe Queens of Sarmiento Park, Camila Sosa Villada: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6111567/villada-camila-sosa-the-queens-of-sarmiento-parkThe Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5227917/liu-cixin-the-three-body-problemA Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6951005/saunders-george-a-swim-in-a-pond-in-the-rainAgatha Christie, Lucy Worsley: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6007132/worsley-lucy-agatha-christieThe Storyteller, Dave Grohl: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6113617/grohl-dave-the-storytellerThe Naked Don't Fear the Water, Matthieu Aikins: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6088623/aikins-matthieu-the-naked-don-t-fear-the-waterThe Climate Book, Greta Thunberg: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7314067/thunberg-greta-the-climate-bookFight Night, Miriam Toews: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5994736/toews-miriam-fight-night*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katy Hessel made her name highlighting the grotesque disparity between the representation of men and women in art galleries and fighting to correct it. Through her podcast and Instagram account, The Great Women artists, and now in her magisterial book The Story of Art Without Men. Beginning in the 16th century, Hessel demonstrates time and again how women have been erased from the history of art, and how—time and again—despite the restrictions imposed by the constraints of the patriarchy have proven significantly more radical and inventive than their male counterparts.Buy The Story of Art Without Men here: *SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Katy Hessel is an art historian, presenter, and curator dedicated to celebrating female artists. The founder of @thegreatwomenartists on Instagram and the podcast of the same name, she lives in London.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This December—six months after saying goodbye—Bloomcast is back for a Holiday Special! Join Alice, Lex and Adam as they answer your questions, play games, tease each other, drink (tea, whiskey, Gimber) and leap off Forty Foot and into Ulysses one more (one last?) time…*Bloomcast is a ten-part plunge into James Joyce's Ulysses presented by Adam Biles, Alice McCrum, and Lex Paulson, live from Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. Join them as they muddle through this radical, sublime, and often misunderstood novel first published one hundred years ago, in 1922.  Please share your thoughts on the book and anything you’d like to hear us discuss: ulysses@shakespeareandcompany.com A student of environmental policy at Sciences Po-Paris, Alice McCrum runs programming at the American Library in Paris.  In between fits of Joycean nerdery, Dr. Lex Paulson is Executive Director of the School of Collective Intelligence at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco. An adopted Parisian, he teaches at Sciences Po-Paris and writes on the past and future of democracy. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, Paris. He is the author of the novel Feeding Time, available in French as Défense de nourrir les vieux. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gone with the Wind is one of the highest grossing films of all time, based on one of the bestselling novels ever written. It is also, according to Sarah Churchwell in her new book, a story “ about enslavers busily pretending that slavery doesn’t matter. Which”—Churchwell adds “is pretty much the story of American history.”The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells provides a powerful critique of the book and film, and an excoriating analysis of how it has shaped the way Americans understand their country, rewrite their history, and excuse their crimes. Buy The Wrath to Come here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6334239/churchwell-sarah-the-wrath-to-come*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby and The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review, and she comments regularly on arts, culture, and politics for television and radio, where appearances include Question Time, Newsnight and The Review Show. She has judged many literary prizes, including the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and she was a co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer’s Award. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🔔Hunchback of Notre-Dame Special! 🔔To celebrate the launch of our exclusive S&Co edition of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame—as well as a limited-edition gift bundle featuring a signed print of the beautiful cover art—Adam is joined by Krista Halverson, S&Co Publishing Director, and artist Neil Gower, to discuss this extraordinary classic of French literature.Find out more about our Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7931829/the-hunchback-bundle*The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle benefits the Friends of Shakespeare and Company Association and includes :- A copy of Shakespeare and Company’s 2022 edition of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, inked with the bookshop stamp. Produced in collaboration with Penguin Classics, the paperback has a gatefold cover, with original artwork and metallic-ink details, and a new introduction penned by the bookshop’s editors.- A print of the cover illustration, hand-signed by its brilliant artist, Neil Gower, and stamped on the back with the bookshop’s hallmark and the date. It measures 37cm by 26cm (14.5" by 10.2") and was printed on 320g paper stock by Art & Caractère in Lavaur, France.All proceeds from the bundle go to Friends of Shakespeare and Company, a not-for-profit association created during the pandemic to support the bookshop’s noncommercial activities. These include our free author events, upstairs reading library, Tumbleweed guest program, weekly podcast, publishing projects, and writers’ rooms, where since 1951 more than 30,000 poets and authors have slept the night for free in Paris. Because the new Association is taking on the related costs of these endeavours, we are better able to begin rebuilding the bookshop financially, to better safeguard Shakespeare and Company for the future—all while not having to sacrifice what’s at the heart of the bookshop: a community of readers and writers. Buy our Hunchback of Notre-Dame Bundle here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7931829/the-hunchback-bundle*Krista Halverson is publishing director at Shakespeare and Company. She wrote and edited the book Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, and she is co-editor of the forthcoming poetry anthology, Paris in Our View, featuring poems about the French capital--it will be published by the bookshop early next year. Prior to moving to Paris, she was the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, Francis Ford Coppola's literary and art quarterly, based in San Francisco. Neil Gower is an internationally acclaimed graphic artist, best known for his book jackets (Bill Bryson, William Golding) and his literary cartography (Kazuo Ishiguro, Jilly Cooper, Simon Armitage). His work has been widely published in Europe and the US, including magazines such as The New Yorker, The Economist and Vanity Fair. He was Contributing Artist to Conde Nast Traveler in New York for 10 years. In 2017, he illustrated/co-authored As Kingfishers Catch Fire, a literary ornithology, with Alex Preston. The intensity and giddiness of distilling written evocations of birds into paint realigned his creativity towards exploring possibilities with his own words. His first collection of poetry Meet Me in Palermo was recently published by The Frogmore Press.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to Speak Whale is an investigation into the possibility, or otherwise, of human cetacean dialogue. It looks into the history of our relationship with these creatures—in some important ways so similar to us, in others, so profoundly different. It lays out our various attempts to interpret their song, and looks at how big data, combined with an open source philosophy might allow us to create a “Google Translate for animals”.It’s also one man’s quest to make sense of the particular, transcendent but terrifying moment, a humpback whale almost landed on top of him.Buy How to Speak Whale: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6534146/mustill-tom-how-to-speak-whale*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for bonus episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Tom Mustill studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, before becoming a conservation biologist and then a wildlife filmmaker. His work with David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Stephen Fry and other conservation and science heroes across the globe have won over 30 international awards, including two Webbys, a Wildscreen Panda, two Jackson Wild Awards, as well as a Primetime Emmy nomination. He directed on the blockbuster Inside Nature's Giants' series which won a BAFTA, Royal Television Society and Broadcast award, as well as the ZSL Award for Communicating Zoology.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we were joined in the writer’s studio by Coco Mellors, author of one of our biggest selling novels of the year, Cleopatra and Frankenstein.It’s the story of a woman and a man—Cleo and Frank—who meet in New York on New Year’s Eve 2006, who fall in love despite—or perhaps because of—their very many differences, and whose marriage within months causes not only an earthquake in their own lives, but also sends disruptive aftershocks out into the lives of their friends and families. All of which makes Cleopatra and Frankenstein one of the most devilishly readable debuts of the year.Buy Cleopatra and Frankenstein: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6416505/mellors-coco-cleopatra-and-frankenstein*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Coco Mellors grew up in London and New York. She has an MFA from New York University, where she was a recipient of the Goldwater Fellowship. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we welcome celebrated poet Billy-Ray Belcourt to discuss his innovative and moving debut novel A Minor Chorus. In the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel, informed by a series of poignant encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus introduces a dazzling new literary voice whose vision and fearlessness shine much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival.Buy A Minor Chorus: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7312862/a-minor-chorus-a-novel*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular archive episodes and access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of four books: This Wound is a World, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, A History of My Brief Body, and A Minor Chorus.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bournville, Jonathan Coe’s latest novel, ostensibly follows the life of Mary Lamb (née Clarke) from VE Day 1945, when she was a precocious young pianist, to the darkest depths of the recent pandemic, stopping off at some of the events that helped define (and redefine) Britain over the last seven decades. As we hop from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, to the 1966 World Cup, through jubilees and the death of Princess Diana, we live not only alongside Mary, but also her parents, her husband, her children and grandchildren, (and in a wider sense the British people as a whole) seeing these events through their eyes, and feeling their sense of excitement or despair at the changes and upheavals in their world.Buy Bournville: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7673827/coe-jonathan-bournville*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Keenan's Industry of Magic and Light transports readers to the Scottish town of Airdrie in the 1960s and 70s, through a catalogue of relics from the local counterculture scene — or as the small ad describes it “Bunch of Local Hippy S**t for Sale. Job lot”. Expressed narrowly, the novel tells the story of the purveyors of a revolutionary psychadelic light show. But there’s nothing narrow about David Keenan’s books. Through this portrait of a band, we get to know a town, its inhabitants, their fascinations, their beliefs, their trips, and how it all hangs together—socially, culturally, cosmically.… Like all of Keenan’s books, it's a ferocious ride of a novel that demands to be read at least twice to get any kind of grasp — which is no burden at all, given how much fun it is to spend time in his world. Buy Industry of Magic and Light: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7392461/keenan-david-industry-of-magic-et-light*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*David Keenan is the author of five critically-acclaimed novels; the cult classic This is Memorial Device, which won the London Magazine Prize; For the Good Times, which won the Gordon Burn Prize; The Towers The Fields The Transmitters, Xstabeth and Monument Maker, which was a Rough Trade Book of the Year. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fight Night by Miriam Toews is a love letter to mothers and daughters, and grandmothers and granddaughters. Told from the perspective of nine-year-old Swiv, who’s having to deal with the imminent upheavals of the birth of a sibling and the declining health of her beloved grandma. With Swiv’s opening words — “Dear Dad, How are you? I was expelled.” — readers are drawn into the chaotic, ramshackle but love-and-life-filled world of this family. A world in which the only way through is to fight.Buy Fight Night: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6240767/toews-miriam-fight-night*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Miriam Toews is the author of seven novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, All My Puny Sorrows, and Women Talking, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust…Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **A series of short readings from some of our favourite poets.Poet, prodigy, precursor, punk: the short, precocious, uncompromisingly rebellious career of the poet Arthur Rimbaud is one of the legends of modern literature. By the time he was twenty, Rimbaud had written a series of poems that are not only masterpieces in themselves but that forever transformed the idea of what poetry is. Without him, surrealism is inconceivable, and his influence is palpable in artists as diverse as Henry Miller, John Ashbery, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. In this essential volume, renowned translator Mark Polizzotti offers authoritative and inspired new versions of Rimbaud’s major poems and letters, including generous selection of Illuminations and the entirety of his lacerating confession A Season in Hell—capturing as never before not only the meaning but also the daredevil attitudes and incantatory rhythms that make Rimbaud’s works among the most perpetually modern of his or any other generation.Buy The Drunken Boat - Selected Writings: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6010246/rimbaud-arthu-the-drunken-boatMark Polizzotti has translated more than fifty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, and Raymond Roussel. He is the recipient of numerous prizes and the author of eleven books, including Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Highway 61 Revisited, and Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **No writer does the life-spanning novel in such a devilishly entertaining yet thought-provoking way as this week’s guest, William Boyd. His new book, The Romantic, follows the meandering, fortune-making-and-fortune-losing story of Cashel Greville Ross who travels the world, embarks on adventures, and falls in love, all across the nineteenth century. Often passionate, sometimes reckless, always psychologically fascinating, Cashel Greville Ross is both a man of his time and perhaps, in certain ways, a hero for our age.Buy The Romantic: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7736567/boyd-william-the-romantic*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **In October 2018 we were honoured to welcome Annie Ernaux to Shakespeare and Company. In conversation with Adam Biles (and interpreter Alice Heathwood), she discussed her masterpiece The Years. To celebrate Annie Ernaux being chosen as the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature we are releasing the recording of that evening as a bonus podcast today.Discover Annie Ernaux’s books here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/post/70/congratulations-to-annie-ernaux-on-winning-the-nobel-prize-for-literature*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **The protagonist of My Name is Yip is, in his own written words, “a mute”, he also stands at 4 feet 8 inches tall and again in his words, “there is not a single hair on my person.” These physical limitations, coupled with the fact that Yip lives in the state of Georgia during the early nineteenth century gold rush, might make you imagine that a brutish and limited life awaited him. And yet, through Yip Tolroy’s sheer force of character, as well as a few twists of fate, his is a story full of adventure, intensity, and human feeling. The voice of Yip is an act of extraordinary literary ventriloquism on the part of debut novelist Paddy Crewe, who so utterly inhabits not only Yip’s mind, but also his epoch, and his geography, that every page of this book hums with an authenticity so rarely achieved in historical fiction. Buy My Name is Yip here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6006015/crewe-paddy-my-name-is-yip*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Paddy Crewe was born in Stockton-on-Tees. He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. His first novel, My Name Is Yip, was published by Penguin in April 2022.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Find out more about our Year of Reading here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7486597/shakespeare-and-company-year-of-reading **Kamila Shamsie’s new novel Best of Friends begins in Karachi in 1988, a year that would prove pivotal in the political history of Pakistan. Zahra and Maryam are teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, finding their feet in a world where they have to keep one eye on the intrigues of the school yard and the other on the lives into which they are expecting or expected to step. Lives of vast opportunity but also uncertainty. In fact perhaps the only certainty for both Zahra and Maryam is their friendship. Rock solid since the age of four. But then something happens, or perhaps better to say almost happens, that continues to cast a shadow thirty years later when the story picks up again in London.Buy Best of Friends here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5782828/kamila-shamsie-shamsie-best-of-friends*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Bailey’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

**Contains outrageous spoilers about the recent Bond film No Time to Die**There are few cultural phenomena that rival the impact, reach and longevity of either The Beatles or James Bond. That both made their first significant impact on the public consciousness on the same day 5 October 1962 — with the release of the Beatles’ first record “Love Me Do’ and Dr. No the first James Bond film — was a significant enough piece of synchronicity for John Higgs to begin an investigation into the decades-long dance between two very different visions of the world, of Britain, of masculinity of art, of love and — inevitably — of death.Buy Love and Let Die here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6267356/higgs-john-love-and-let-die*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*John Higgs is a writer who specialises in finding previously unsuspected narratives, hidden in obscure corners of our history and culture, which can change the way we see the world. In the words of MOJO magazine, “Reading John Higgs is like being shot with a diamond. Suddenly everything becomes terrifyingly clear”. The Times agreed, saying that “Higgs’s prose has a diamond-hard quality. He knows how to make us relate.” “A while ago I decided to read anything Higgs writes,” said Frank Cottrell Boyce, “He seems to be able to take any subject — pop music, Watling Street, conspiracy theories, robotics — and poke at it until it yields up its secrets.” Russell Brand described him succinctly as “a great writer […] who pulls shit together in an interesting way.”Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new series of short readings from some of our favourite poets.Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2017, she completed a master’s degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. Buy Poūkahangatus: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/6037217/tibble-tayi-poukahangatusIntimate, moving, virtuosic, and hilarious, Tayi Tibble is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today. In Poūkahangatus (pronounced “Pocahontas”), her debut volume, Tibble challenges a dazzling array of mythologies—Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi—peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Her poems move from rhythmic discussions of the Kardashians, sugar daddies, and Twilight to exquisite renderings of the natural world and precise emotions (“The lump in her throat swelled like a sea that threatened to take him from her, and she had to swallow hard”). Tibble is also a master narrator of teenage womanhood, its exhilarating highs and devastating lows; her high-camp aesthetics correlate to the overflowing beauty, irony, and ruination of her surroundings. *SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lessons, Ian McEwan’s new novel, works from an intimate perspective, but on an epic scale. We accompany Roland Baines at different moments of his life—military brat, baby boomer, failed poet, pubescent boarder, single father, lounge pianist for hire—as he lives and relives some of the experiences—both domestic and world-historical—that moulded him. But as the years go by, and Roland’s sense of exactly how he was shaped and by whom changes, we readers come to understand how much our own apprehension of the past is tinted by our experience of the present.Buy Lessons here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7495498/mcewan-ian-lessons*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is A.M. Homes whose new novel The Unfolding invites readers into the lives of a wealthy, John-McCain supporting Republican family on the day of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, which turns into a satirical “origin story” for the MAGA movement, as well a book about families, the frustrations they fester, and the lies and compromises that sustain them.Buy The Unfolding here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7284774/homes-a-m-y-the-unfolding*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*A.M. Homes is the author of thirteen books, among them the best-selling memoir The Mistress’ Daughter; the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice, and Jack; and the short story collections Days of Awe, The Safety of Objects and Things You Should Know. She also writes for film and television and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7209940/biles-adam-feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is Tess Gunty, winner of the 2022 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel The Rabbit Hutch.*The Rabbit Hutch is a low-cost housing complex in the post-industrial town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. It’s home to a mix of generations and familial constellations—couples, singletons, roommates—whose lives ebb and flow according to the economic and social forces that surround them, as well as the deeper-flowing currents of their pasts.It’s also home to Blandine who, we learn at the beginning of Tess Gunty’s novel—isn’t like the other residents of her building. How and, crucially, why this is the case are the questions at the heart of the book.But beyond the Rabbit Hutch, beyond Vacca Vale Indiana, beyond the United States even, The Rabbit Hutch is also a book about how our lives intersect, how our actions impact upon the lives of people we didn’t even know existed, and how a little bit of human cruelty, can go a long way but how human tenderness can go even further.Rick Moody called Tess Gunty a writer of “uncommon originality, both in terms of voice and vision” while Jonathan Safran Foer described the Rabbit Hutch as “a profoundly wise, wildly inventive, deeply moving work of art.”*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Tess Gunty was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. She received a B.A. in English with an Honors Concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, where she won the Ernest Sandeen Award for her poetry collection. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow, and her work was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, The Iowa Review, Freeman’s, and other publications, and she lives in Los Angeles.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Stephen May whose fifth novel, Sell Us the Rope is a fictional retelling of events surrounding the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party, which took place in London in 1907.We spend most of our time following Koba—as the young man who would become Stalin was then known—as he arrives in a poverty-riddled city, and plunges into the heart of turn-of-the-century revolutionary politics. There’s factionalism, and arguments, and strategising, and backstabbing, and money-grubbing, as well as the constant shadowy presence of the Okhrana—Russia’s over active secret police force. There are also appearances by some of the defining personalities of the 20th-century—Lenin, Trotsky, Gorky and Rosa Luxembourg among them—long before they left their indelible marks on modern history.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Stephen May is the author of five novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. He has also been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year and is a winner of the Media Wales Reader’s Prize. He has also written plays, as well as for television and film. He lives in West Yorkshire.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we welcome Booker-longlisted Selby Wynn Schwartz, whose debut novel After Sappho is a fountain of fleeting fragments that together depict in lush psychical detail the lives of a group of lesbian women in turn-of-the-20th-century Europe. Except Selby Wynn Schwartz does not just tell the story of these women, or even retell it, but—inspired by the splintered remains of Sappho’s poetry—reinvents the very form of the novel, turning it into something more diffuse, more choric and more radical.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Selby Wynn Schwartz is the author of The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and their Afterlives, a 2020 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. Her creative work has appeared in Speculative Nonfiction, Lammergeier, and Passages North; her first novella, A Life in Chameleons, won the 2021 Reflex Press Novella.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid’s startling new novel, holds up a shattered mirror to readers, reflecting back a recognisable, but heightened and reconfigured version of our world.One morning Anders, a white man, wakes up to find that his skin is now dark — with no indication as to how this has happened, or why now, why to him. Anders must reckon with this metamorphosis, how it changes the way he looks at himself, how others look at him, and how he looks at others looking at him… The Last White Man somehow feels at once like an age-old story, and something strikingly new and causes readers to reflect upon the preconceptions and prejudices that structure our lives.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Mohsin Hamid writes regularly for The New York Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and is the author of Exit West, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Discontent and its Civilizations. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, he has since lived between Lahore, London and New York.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is a book of large scope—spanning more than four centuries—and even larger ideas. In fewer than 300 pages we take in pandemics, time travel and colonialism—of both lunar and early-20th Century varieties. What keeps our feet on solid ground is Emily St John Mandel’s elegant, light-touch prose, her almost preternatural gift for spinning a story, and perhaps above all else the convincing, compassionately-told human stories at its core.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her novels are Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, The Lola Quartet, Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. She lives in New York City.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we welcome former S&Co bookseller, Elaine Hsieh Chou, to discuss Disorientation, a campus novel retooled for the 21st century. Disorientation rushes headlong into some of the most fractious debates that are animating college campuses across the world: systemic injustice in academia, freedom of expression, and safe spaces, not forgetting the specific obstacles and prejudices faced by Asian Americans as they work to get a foothold on the academic ladder.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American writer from California. A 2017 Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at NYU and a 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow, her short fiction appears in The Normal School, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Tin House Online and Ploughshares. Her debut novel DISORIENTATION is out from Penguin Press (US) and will be out from Picador (UK) on July 21, 2022. Her short story collection WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM? is forthcoming from Penguin Press.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by former diplomat Arthur Snell to discuss How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997-2021, his compelling and convincing account of the outsized role Britain has played in provoking or exacerbating many of the international crises of the past few decades.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*After graduating from Oxford with a first class degree in history, Arthur Snell joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. A fluent Arabic speaker, he served in Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Yemen, and Iraq. He headed the international strand of the UK Government’s Prevent counterterrorism programme. He is currently a geopolitical consultant and host of the hit podcast Doomsday Watch.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are few people who can write so brilliantly, about so many subjects, all at once, as Geoff Dyer. The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings could be his most wide ranging to date. It’s about tennis—as the title suggests—and specifically about the curtain dropping on the career of one of the most successful, and most technically beautiful players, ever. But it’s also about endings of so many other kinds: the significance, or otherwise, of an artist’s last work; mental and intellectual decline; finishing and not finishing books; and why, perhaps, deep down, we really just long for everything to come to be over with...*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and three previous novels, as well as nine non-fiction books. Dyer has won the Somerset Maugham Prize, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography’s 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E.M. Forster Award. In 2009 he was named GQ’s Writer of the Year. He won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 and was a finalist in 1998. In 2015 he received a Windham Campbell Prize for non-fiction. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. He currently lives in Los Angeles where he is Writer in Residence at the University of Southern California.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Michael Pedersen, whose new book Boy Friends is a profoundly personal, searingly honest examination of grief, inspired by the death of Scott Hutchison, the author’s dearest friend, and artistic co-conspirator Although heartbreaking at moments, Boy Friends is by no means a depressing book. In fact it’s funny, and tender, and insightful, as well as an authentic and touching quest to give voice to the maelstrom of emotions such a devastating loss provokes. It’s also an examination of male friendship, and the difficulties many of us have expressing the love that underpins them, having been brought up in societies that minimise or mock such emotions.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. His second collection, Oyster, was published in 2017 and was illustrated by and performed as a live show with Scott Hutchison (of Scottish band Frightened Rabbit). Pedersen has been named one of Canongate’s Future 40; was a finalist for the 2018 Writer of the Year at the Herald Scottish Culture Awards; was awarded the 2014 John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award; and won a 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie!, a prize-winning arts collective that has produced cutting-edge shows around the world for over ten years.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were joined in store this week by the wonderful Ali Smith to discuss Companion Piece, the the fifth-volume in the increasingly inaccurately named Seasons Quartet.Taking the ongoing pandemic as its backdrop, Companion Piece is a mischievous, enigmatic puzzle of a novel, that examines how companionship and togetherness might be possible in a world in which everything—from a deadly virus to the vested interests of corrupt politicians—is fighting to divide us.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh’s extraordinary fourth novel, unfolds in a medieval fiefdom of the same name. It’s a story of struggle in a world in which one human wields absolute power over another, but in which all must submit to a Nature that writhes and wriggles, and has still not been fully stripped of its capacity for magic. It’s also a world in which God and the Devil have a very real impact upon Lapvonians’s lives, and in which the next village feels like another world, but heaven and hell are within grasping distance.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World and a novella, McGlue. She lives in Southern California.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A collection of seven extraordinary short stories, Vanessa Onwuemezi’s Dark Neighbourhood resists interpretation and elides description, shifting between voices and styles with astonishing deftness and grace. Spaces and territories are important to the book, how we inhabit them and how they shape us, as are attempts to understand how not just our minds, but our entire beings are affected when we pass from darkness into light, and back again. Buy Dark Neighbourhood: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781913097707/dark-neighbourhood*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Vanessa Onwuemezi is a writer and poet living in London. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prototype, frieze and Five Dials. Her story ‘At the Heart of Things’ won the White Review Short Story Prize 2019.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special live episode, recorded at the Hay Festival, we were joined by Sandra Newman, whose new novel The Men takes a very stark idea and runs with it. What would happen, to the world, to society, to minds, if one day all the Men, and boys—everyone with a Y chromosome in fact—just disappeared? Newman’s vision is of a world set free, but also a world plunged into mourning, in which some structures collapse while others hold firm, in which certain of those left behind cling on to the “religious” idea of Men, and all they stood for, while others set about adapting, organising and rebuilding something better. Buy The Men here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783789016/the-men*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Sandra Newman is the author of four previous novels; The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, (shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award), Cake, The Country of Ice Cream Star (longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Literature) and The Heavens. She co-authored the hugely successful How Not to Write a Novel with Howard Mittelmark. She has also written The Western Lit Survival Kit, Read This Next, and a memoir, Changeling. She lives in New York.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we’re joined by Olivia Laing, one of the finest non-fiction writers at work today, to discuss her latest book Everybody: A Book About Freedom.Buy Everybody here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781509857128/everybody*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She writes for the Guardian, the New York Times, and Frieze, among many other publications. Her books include Crudo, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and translated into fifteen languages. The recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction, she lives in London, England.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Meg Mason, author of the literary sensation Sorrow and Bliss.*'It is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. It is also impossible not to laugh out loud... Extraordinary'GuardianEveryone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets.So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times and The Times of London. Her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times UK, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for Sunday STYLE magazine and The New Yorker's Daily Shouts and been a regular columnist for GQ and contributor to ELLE, marie claire and Vogue. Her first novel You Be Mother was published in 2017. It was followed by Sorrow and Bliss, first released in Australia in 2020, then published in the US in February 2021 and out in the UK in June 2021. The studio, New Regency, is adapting Sorrow and Bliss for screen. Visit megmason.com for more.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is guest is Jem Calder, author of Reward System a series of interlinked stories that charts a group of friends in their mid-twenties as they struggle to make something of their lives in an indifferent, often hostile, 21st century metropolis.Sally Rooney said that “Reward System is an exhilarating and beautiful book by an extraordinarily gifted writer. Reading these stories, I found myself thinking newly and differently about contemporary life” while Holly Pester called it “'A crushing and clear-sighted portrayal of people dodging the alienation of work, money and life's digital shorelines” adding that the short scenes were “so brilliantly observed I felt the reality of a generation in every detail.”*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Jem Calder was born in Cambridge, and lives and works in London. His fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly and Granta. Reward System is his first bookAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

DBC Pierre’s Big Snake Little Snake is a characteristically freewheeling, riotous account of a couple of years the author lived in the Caribbean, spending his time, among other endeavours, conducting an inquiry into risk. It’s also an extraordinarily fun book, yet with a deep seriousness at its core. Seeking to understand, as it does, how the world can be presented to us as fundamentally indifferent, while also being so clearly, and so often, unfair.Buy Big Snake, Little Snake here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781788169776/big-snake-little-snake-an-inquiry-into-risk*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*One of the nation's most uncompromising literary voices, DBC Pierre is author of the novels VERNON GOD LITTLE, LUDMILA'S BROKEN ENGLISH and LIGHTS OUT IN WONDERLAND, plus the picture book for distracted adults PETIT MAL and the Hammer novella BREAKFAST WITH THE BORGIAS. The novel VERNON GOD LITTLE sold in 43 territories and won the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Award and the James Joyce Award from University College Dublin. His ground-breaking new novel MEANWHILE IN DOPAMINE CITY was published by Faber & Faber in August2020 and is short-listed for The Goldsmiths Prize.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite being a lauded writer and critic, despite being the winner of a Pulitzer Prize even, Margo Jefferson innovates and takes risks like a writer with nothing to lose. Her new book, Constructing a Nervous System is both the history of a mind’s formation and the deconstruction of a culture and its tropes, as well as what feels like a form of self-analysis taking place on the page, beneath the readers eyes, in real time. It’s a book about race and gender, but also of family and culture, where all four intersect, and how one person used the limitations society sought to place on her as a ladder to climb free of them. Buy Constructing a Nervous System here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783789009/constructing-a-nervous-system-a-memoirThe winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, Margo Jefferson was for years a theater and book critic for Newsweek and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in, among other publications, Vogue, New York magazine, and The New Republic. She is the author of On Michael Jackson and is a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On 29 November 2019, Usman Kahn attacked and killed Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at Fishmongers Hall in London, and was later shot dead by police on London Bridge. Jones and Merritt were involved in a prison education programme in which Kahn had participated. All three had gathered at an event that day to mark five years of the programme. Preti Taneja also worked on that programme as a teacher of creative writing in prisons. Jack Merritt oversaw her work. Kahn was one of her students. Aftermath, is Taneja’s attempt to come to an understanding of these events both how they called into question what had come before and the grief and trauma they engendered.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Preti Taneja is a writer and activist. Her first novel, We That Are Young, won the Desmond Elliott Prize and was listed for awards including the Folio Prize and the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into several languages. Her second book is Aftermath, a lament on the language of prison, terror, trauma and grief. Taneja is Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She is a contributing editor at And Other Stories, and at The White Review.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Superstar Poets and (Step)Fatherhood in Chile, with Alejandro ZambraWhat is a Chilean Poet? According to Pru, one of the characters in Alejandro Zambra’s latest novel, ‘Being a Chilean poet is like being a Peruvian chef or a Brazilian soccer player or a Venezuelan model.’ That’s to say they are famous, respected and wealthy…or at least, some of them are. But what makes a Chilean poet? That’s a little harder to pin down, and in a way it’s this question that bugs not only the writer of this extraordinary and charming novel, but also several of its characters—Gonzalo and his step-son Vicente chief among them. Chilean Poet is a tender and moving depiction of a country, an art-form, and a family. It’s deeply insightful on the subjects of parenthood, class and failure, and it’s also got some of the most brilliantly written, and staggeringly awkward, examples of lovemaking—both adolescent and middle-aged—we’ve ever had the squiriming pleasure to read.Buy Chilean Poet here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783782888/chilean-poet*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Alejandro Zambra was born in Santiago, Chile in 1975. He is the author of two books of poems, Bahía Inútil and Mudanza; a collection of essays, No leer; and three novels, Bonsái, which was awarded a Chilean Critics Award for best novel, The Private Lives of Trees, and Ways of Going Home, which was awarded the Altazor Prize, selected by The National Book Council as the best Chilean novel published during 2012, and won an English Pen Award. He was selected as one of Granta‘s Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was elected to the Bogotá39 list.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special double episode we welcome dear friends of the bookshop Rachel Cusk and Siemon Scamell-Katz. First up is a conversation between Rachel Cusk and Adam Biles about her extraordinary recent novel Second Place, recorded in March in front of a small in store audience. Then, the podcast decamps 28 rue Saint Gille, where Siemon Scamell-Katz’s transcendent exhibition La fin de l’alterité (The End of Otherness), runs until April the 16th. There, Adam talks with Siemon about his exhibition, and both Rachel and Siemon about Quarry, their newly published collaboration for Sylph Editions Cahier Series.Find out more about Siemon Scamell-Katz’s La fin de l’alterité here: https://siemonscamell-katz.comFollow Siemon Scamell-Katz on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/siemon_scamell.katz/?hl=enBuy Second Place here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780571366699/second-place-longlisted-for-the-booker-prize-2021Rachel Cusk is the author of the Outline Trilogy, the memoirs A Life’s Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and non-fiction. She is a Guggenheim fellow. She lives in Paris.Siemon Scamell-Katz is a contemporary painter living and working between Norfolk and Paris. His practice is based on an understanding of the way humans see, an understanding he uses to create abstract paintings in oil and enamel on aluminium.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special episode, we’re joined by Parisian jazz musician Alex Freiman, to discuss the process of composing the theme music for Friends of Shakespeare and Company Read UlyssesHear more from Alex Freiman here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Follow Alex Freiman on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alex.guitarfreiman/*Looking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? Listen here: https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesSUBSCRIBE NOW FOR EARLY EPISODES AND BONUS FEATURESAll episodes of our Ulysses podcast are free and available to everyone. However, if you want to be the first to hear the recordings, by subscribing, you can now get early access to recordings of complete sections.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/channel/shakespeare-and-company/id6442697026Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoIn addition a subscription gets you access to regular bonus episodes of our author interview podcast. All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit.*Discover more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/homeAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Find out more about him here: https://www.adambiles.netBuy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeDr. Lex Paulson is Executive Director of the School of Collective Intelligence at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco.Original music & sound design by Alex Freiman.Hear more from Alex Freiman here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Follow Alex Freiman on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alex.guitarfreiman/Featuring Flora Hibberd on vocals.Hear more of Flora Hibberd here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5EFG7rqfVfdyaXiRZbRkpSVisit Flora Hibberd's website: This is my website:florahibberd.com and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/florahibberd/ Music production by Adrien Chicot.Hear more from Adrien Chicot here: https://bbact.lnk.to/utco90/Follow Adrien Chicot on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/adrienchicot/Photo of Alex Freiman by Laurent Delhourme Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To mark the paperback release of George Saunders’s extraordinary reading and writing guide A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, we are delighted to release this conversation from last year—previously only available to Friends of Shakespeare and Company.*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo, a literary masterclass on how to become both a better writer and reader, on what makes great stories work, and what they can tell us about how to live. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor in the prestigious Syracuse University graduate MFA creative writing program. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches each of these stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. For the process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes. Funny, frank, and rigorous, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain ultimately shows how great fiction can change a person's life and become a benchmark of one's moral and ethical beliefs.*George Saunders is the author of nine books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the Premio Rezzori prize. Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One way Philippe Sands has described his extraordinary new book The Ratline is as “a sort of Nazi love story”. While there is certainly a love-story between two Nazis at its heart—specifically the marriage of Otto and Charlotte Wachter—The Ratline is so much more than that. It’s an investigation into the escape routes used by high-ranking German officials after the end of the Second World War, that reads at times, like a spy-thriller. It’s a study of memory, responsibility and guilt. It’s an examination of the self-deception that filial duty can engender. And it’s an exploration of the geopolitical, ideological and historical fault-lines that are still making themselves felt, and horrendously so, today.Buy The Ratline here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781474608145/the-ratline-love-lies-and-justice-on-the-trail-of-a-nazi-fugitive*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS EPISODESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Philippe Sands is an international lawyer and, since 2018, the president of English PEN. He is a frequent commentator on CNN and the BBC World Service. In 2003 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He lives in London.Follow Philippe on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/philippesandsAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As its title suggests, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a book about the many and varied crises our world is facing. However by tracing the roots of these crises back over decades rather than years, and by focussing less on the political or economic shocks themselves, and more on the systemic and cross-continental fault lines that allowed for and amplified these shocks, Disorder, acts as a welcome antidote the short-termism and parochial thinking that has come to define a lot of political analysis.And while Disorder may not make the crises we face any less frightening, it certainly makes them far less confusing, and that is a source of a certain relief in itself.Buy Disorder here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780198864981/disorder-hard-times-in-the-21st-century*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes and early access to Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University. She is the author of Oil and the western economic crisis (2017); China and the mortgaging of America (2010); and Might, right, prosperity and consent: representative democracy and the international economy (2008). Since 2015, Helen has been a regular contributor to the podcast Talking Politics and has written articles for the London Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Financial Times.Follow Helen on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/HelenHet20Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Shak Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We speak with novelist Rob Doyle about his new book Autobibliography in which he recounts a year spent rereading 52 books. Detailing the memories the books unearthed and the impact they had on him Autobibliography is a fascinating insight into the apprenticeship of one of our most exciting young novelists and a full-throated, although not unambiguous celebration of the power of literature.Buy Autobibliography here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781800750524/autobibliography*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including:Early access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read UlyssesAn initiation into the world of rare book collecting;The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles;Handpicked classic interviews from our archive;And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Rob Doyle was born in Dublin. His first novel, Here Are the Young Men, was published in 2014. It was chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times, Irish Times and Independent, and was among Hot Press magazine's '20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016'. Doyle has adapted it for a film with director Eoin Macken. Doyle's collection of short stories, This is the Ritual, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Doyle is the editor of the The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press), and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep (Broken Dimanche Press). His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Vice, TLS, Dublin Review, and many other publications, and he writes a weekly books column for the Irish Times. He teaches on the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Limerick, and lives the rest of the year in Berlin.Follow Rob on Twitter here: @RobDoyle1Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In The Sinner and the Saint, Kevin Birmingham deftly unpicks the personal, societal, historical and philosophical forces that led Fyodor Dostoyeksky—isolated, indebted, beset by epileptic seizures—to take up his pen in the summer of 1865 and begin writing Crime and Punishment, and shows how it’s impossible to understand the invention of Rasklonikov without also getting to grips with the mind of a French murderer-poet who charmed and outraged Parisian society, in almost equal measure, three decades earlier—the notorious Pierre François Lacenaire.Buy The Sinner and the Saint here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780241235942/the-sinner-and-the-saint-dostoevsky-a-crime-and-its-punishment*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including:Early access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read UlyssesAn initiation into the world of rare book collecting;The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles;Handpicked classic interviews from our archive;And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Kevin Birmingham is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Most Dangerous Book, which won the PEN New England Award and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. He has been named a Public Scholar by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by the legendary guitarist, composer, record producer, writer, and founding member of Patti Smith and Her Band, Lenny Kaye to discuss his epic and illuminating new book Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock & RollBuy Lighting Striking here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781474615075/lightning-striking*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESLooking for Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses? https://podfollow.com/sandcoulyssesIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including:Early access to complete chapters of Friends of Shakespeare and Company read UlyssesAn initiation into the world of rare book collecting;The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles;Handpicked classic interviews from our archive;And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in November, Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen dropped by the bookshop for a reading and a chat. The conversation touched on poetry, class, adapting the Greeks, artistic cross-pollination, the perks of being Scottish writer, and how midwives are the toughest crowd of all . . .Buy Slug here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780349726366/slug-the-sunday-times-bestsellerBuy Oyster here:Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including:An initiation into the world of rare book collecting;The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles;Handpicked classic interviews from our archive;And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Hollie McNish is a poet, writer and spoken word artist based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She has published four collections of poetry, and a poetic memoir on politics and new parenthood, Nobody Told Me (2016), which won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and has been translated into German, French and Spanish. McNish’s latest book is a cross-genre collection of poetry, memoir and short stories, Slug, and other things I've been told to hate, as is her forthcoming collection, Lobster. McNish, whose themes include breast-feeding, motherhood, immigration and women in sport, has a Master’s degree in Economics and no drama training. She gave her first live poetry reading at basement open mic night in Covent Garden, London, has since performed worldwide, and was crowned 2009’s UK Slam poetry champion. Among many activities, McNish runs Page to Performance, which delivers spoken word workshops and poetry slams to schools and other audiences.Michael Pedersen is a prize-winning Scottish poet and author. His second collection, Oyster, was published in 2017 and was illustrated by and performed as a live show with Scott Hutchison (of Scottish band Frightened Rabbit). Pedersen has been named one of Canongate’s Future 40; was a finalist for the 2018 Writer of the Year at the Herald Scottish Culture Awards; was awarded the 2014 John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award; and won a 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Pedersen also co-founded Neu! Reekie!, a prize-winning arts collective that has produced cutting-edge shows around the world for over ten years. Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the Valentine’s week episode of our podcast, we were joined by Xiaolu Guo to discuss her intense, fragmentary meditation on the nature of love, A Lover’s Discourse.Buy A Lover’s Discourse here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781529112481/a-lovers-discourseBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch.Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together.Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.*Xiaolu Guo was born in south China. She studied at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before moving to London in 2002. Her books include Village of Stone which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and I Am China which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Jhalak Prize and the Rathbones Folio Award 2018, and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. In 2013 Xiaolu was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese, and documentaries about China and Britain. She was a judge for the Booker Prize in 2019, and is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Andrew Hankinson, author of the brilliant Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.), a book about three things:1. A room called the Comedy Cellar.2. Who gets to speak in that room.3. What they get to say.Buy Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.) here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781911617686/dont-applaud-either-laugh-or-dont-at-the-comedy-cellarBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*The Comedy Cellar is a tiny basement club in New York's Greenwich Village. Run according to the principles of its owners, the Dworman family, it became a safe place for stand-ups to take risks and experiment. Superstar comedians such as Amy Schumer, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, and Louis CK became regulars, celebrities started to hang out, the club hosted debates, and everyone was encouraged to argue at its back table. Then the Comedy Cellar ended up on the frontline of the global culture war.Andrew Hankinson speaks to the Cellar's owner, comedians, and audience members, using interviews, emails, podcasts, letters, text messages, and previously private documents to create a conversation about who gets to speak and what they get to say, and why. Moving backwards in time from Louis CK's downfall to when Manny Dworman used to host folk singers including Bob Dylan, this is about a comedy club, but it's also about the widening cultural chasm.*Andrew Hankinson is a journalist who was born, raised, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, northern England. He started his career at Arena magazine and is now a freelance feature writer who has contributed to publications including GQ, The Observer, The Guardian, and Wired. His first book, You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat], won the CWA Non-Fiction Prize in 2016.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In anticipation of the first episode of Friends of Shakespeare and Company Read Ulysses this Wednesday, we were delighted to talk to former S&Co tumbleweed Patrick Hastings, and the creator of UlyssesGuide.com, about The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses, his essential companion to this modernist classic.Buy The Guide to James Joyce’s Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781421443492/the-guide-to-james-joyces-ulysses*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR EARLY EPISODES AND BONUS FEATURESAll episodes of Friends of Shakespeare Read Ulysses are free and available to everyone. However, if you want to be the first to hear the recordings, by subscribing, you can now get early access to recordings of complete sections.Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enSubscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoIn addition, if you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, a subscription gets you access to regular bonus episodes of the bookshop's interview podcast. All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Discover more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/homeAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeHear more from Alex Freiman here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1Follow him on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alex.guitarfreiman/Hear more of Flora Hibberd here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5EFG7rqfVfdyaXiRZbRkpSHear more from Adrien Chicot here: https://bbact.lnk.to/utco90/Follow him on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/adrienchicot/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Booker-shortlisted Nadifa Mohamed discussing The Fortune Men a gripping fictional portrayal of a real miscarriage of justice in 1950s Cardiff.Buy The Fortune Men here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780241466940/the-fortune-men-shortlisted-for-the-costa-novel-of-the-year-awardBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman's noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.*Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa, Somaliland, in 1981 and moved to Britain at the age of four. Her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, won the Betty Trask Prize; it was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN Open Book Award. Her second novel, Orchard of Lost Souls, won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Prix Albert Bernard. Nadifa Mohamed was selected for the Granta Best of Young British Novelists in 2013, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Fortune Men was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize. Nadifa Mohamed lives in London.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2nd February - 16th June 2022933 Pages, 110 readers, (roughly) 70 characters, 18 Sections, 5 months, 1 book. 100 years.Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES by James JoyceTo listen, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES is conceived and produced at Shakespeare and Company in Paris by S&Co Literary Director Adam Biles in collaboration with Professor Lex Paulson, and in partnership with Penguin Classics and Hay Festival.Find out more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.comBuy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulyssesFind out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/home Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is the wonderful Rebecca Solnit discussing Orwell’s Roses, her fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.Buy Orwell’s Roses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783788620/orwells-rosesBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*From 1936 to 1940, the newly-wed George Orwell lived in a small cottage inHertfordshire, writing, and tending his garden. When Rebecca Solnit visited the cottage, she discovered the descendants of the roses that he had planted many decades previously. These survivors, as well as the diaries he kept of his planting and growing, provide a springboard for a fresh look at Orwell's motivations and drives -and the optimism that countered his dystopian vision - and open up a profound mediation on our relationship to plants, trees and the natural world.Tracking Orwell's impact on political thought over the last century, Solnit journeys toEngland and Russia, Mexico and Colombia, exploring the political and historical events that shaped Orwell's life and her own. From a history of roses to discussions of climate change and insights into structural inequalities in contemporary society, Orwell's Roses is a fresh reading of a towering figure of 20th century literary and political life, which finds optimism, solace and solutions to our 21st century world.*Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Call Them By Their True Names, The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. A contributing editor to Harper’s, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our first podcast of 2022 we leave the bookshop and take to the buses of Paris for a conversation with Lauren Elkin, author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute.Buy No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781838014186/no-9192-notes-on-a-parisian-commute*SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURESIf you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including: An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.Subscribe on Spotify here: https://anchor.fm/sandcoSubscribe on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoSubscribe on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enAll money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events.*Commuting between English and French, Lauren Elkin chronicles a life in transit. From musings on Virginia Woolf and Georges Perec, to her first impressions in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, to the discovery of her ectopic pregnancy, her diary sketches a portrait of the author, not as an artist, but as a pregnant woman on a Parisian bus. In the troubling intimacy of public transport, Elkin queries the lines between togetherness and being apart, between the everyday and the eventful, registering the ordinary makings of a city and its people.Lauren Elkin is a Franco-American writer and translator. Her last book, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her translation, with Charlotte Mandell, of Claude Arnaud's biography of Jean Cocteau, won the 2017 French-American Foundation's Translation Prize. Her next book, Art Monsters: on Beauty and Excess, is to be published by Chatto & Windus. She currently lives in London, with her partner and son.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by Claire Messud to discuss A Dream Life, her drily funny, deeply perceptive story about displacement, and class, and social climbing, and the effect that having domestic staff can have not only on one’s family, but on one’s sense of self.Buy A Dream Life here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781649697295/a-dream-lifeBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*“A perfect frolic of a book, puffed on breezes of beauty and wit: it waltzes you through a little fear, a little darkness, and tips you out, refreshed and laughing, into the sun.” Helen GarnerWhen the Armstrong family moves from New York at the dawn of the 1970s, Australia feels, to Alice Armstrong, like the end of the earth. Residing in a grand manor on the glittering Sydney Harbour, her family finds their life has turned upside down. As she navigates this strange new world, Alice must find a way to weave an existence from its shimmering mirage.Lies and self-deception are at the heart of this keenly observed story. This is a sharp, biting and playful tale with a cast of unscrupulous characters adrift in a dream life of their own making.Written with the characteristic delicacy of touch, humour and emotional insight that makes Claire Messud one of our greatest writers.*Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a little treat this Christmas, we’re delighted to bring you an extract of Cerys Matthews reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas. Cerys read the same extract when she last visited us at the bookshop in December 2015. It was such a magical moment that, when we learned that Cerys had recorded this story for posterity, we asked if we could share some of it with you.The full version is available on CD here: https://cerysmatthews.co.uk/product/dylan-thomas-a-childs-christmas-poems-and-tiger-eggs/Or to stream on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4r8YyMz1maFauVfo9RznXv?si=WSGzsLOJSUu5xzDjY-0Q1wIf you enjoy listening to our podcast and would like to spend even more of 2022 with us in Paris, you can now subscribe for exclusive regular bonus episodes.On Spotify: https://anchor.fm/sandco/subscribeOn Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=enOr on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sandcoListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32H…kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by Sarah Hall, author of Burntcoat a novel of and for our times. Called “dark and brilliant” by Sarah Moss and “a masterpiece” by Daisy Johnson, much like the Japanese burnt timber technique evoked in the book, Burntcoat leaves readers scarred but fortified, more ready to face life’s elements.Buy Burntcoat here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780571329328/burntcoatBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*You were the last one here before I closed the door of Burntcoat, before we all shut our doors.In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. Her life will draw to an end in the coming days.Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world.*Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria. Twice nominated for the Man Booker Prize, she is the award-winning author of six novels and three short-story collections: The Beautiful Indifference, which won the Edge Hill and Portico prizes, Madame Zero, winner of the East Anglian Book Award, and Sudden Traveller, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. She is currently the only author to be four times shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, which she won in 2013 with ‘Mrs Fox’ and in 2020 with ‘The Grotesques’.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Shakespeare and Company podcast. Every week or so we release a new conversation with an internationally acclaimed author, recorded at our store in the heart of Paris. Recent guests have included Elif Shafak, Richard Powers, Leïla Slimani, Lauren Groff, Armando Iannucci and many more.And for those of you who want to spend even more time here at Kilometre Zero, you can now subscribe for just three euros a month.For that, you’ll get exclusive access to regular bonus episodes including… An initiation into the world of rare book collecting; The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles; Handpicked classic interviews from our archive; And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.All money raised goes to supporting “Friends of Shakespeare and Company” the bookshop’s non-profit, created to fund our noncommercial activities—from the upstairs reading library, to the writers-in-residence program, to our charitable collaborations, and our free events. We’re very grateful for your support. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Aysegül Savaş joined Adam live in our writer’s studio to discuss White on White, her book about art and artists, parents and their children, beauty and class, as well as the quest for perfection and the compromises we make in pursuit of it. White on White was called "marvelous" by Lauren Groff and "gentle, mysterious and profound” by Marina Abramović.Buy White on White here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780593330517/white-on-white-a-novelBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio.In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas.What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos.White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.*Ayşegül Savaş is the author of Walking on the Ceiling. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Paris.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel Feeding Time here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Philip Hoare discusses Albert & the Whale his dive into the mind of Albrecht Durer, one of the most well-known yet mysterious of artists. Mysterious because he lived at that fluid time, in the fifteenth century, where history and legend often blend into one. Mysterious because his works feel so replete with meaning and yet prove so hard to interpret. And mysterious because his skills were so advanced, his genius so profound, that his techniques are hard to replicate even more than five centuries later.'This is a wonderful book. A lyrical journey into the natural and unnatural world' Patti SmithBuy Albert & the Whale here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780008323295/albert-and-the-whaleBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore*Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it also foresaw our future. It is a vision that remains startlingly powerful and seductive, even now.In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Durer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Durer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us?With its wild and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze.*Philip Hoare is the author of six works of non-fiction: Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990) and Noel Coward: A Biography (1995), Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy, and the First World War (1997), Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital (2000), and England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005). Leviathan or, The Whale (2008), won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. Most recently, The Sea Inside (2013) was published to great critical acclaim.An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honourary doctorate in 2011.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by Lauren Groff, whose latest novel Matrix an extraordinary story of transformation, visions, leaps of faith, vicious battles, friendship, and creativity, as well as — to cite USA Today — “a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell”. Matrix is a true original, unlike any literary experience you will have this year, probably one of the many reasons for which it was selected as a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award.Buy Matrix here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781785151910/matrix-the-new-york-times-bestsellerBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Seventeen-year-old Marie, too wild for courtly life, is thrown to the dogs one winter morning, expelled from the royal court to become the prioress of an abbey. Marie is strange - tall, a giantess, her elbows and knees stick out, ungainly.

At first taken aback by life at the abbey, Marie finds purpose and passion among her mercurial sisters. Yet she deeply misses her secret lover Cecily and queen Eleanor.

Born last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, women who flew across the countryside with their sword fighting and dagger work, Marie decides to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. She will bring herself, and her sisters, out of the darkness, into riches and power.

MATRIX is a bold vision of female love, devotion and desire from one of the most adventurous writers at work today.
*Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of three novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, and Fates and Furies, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Award, and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and she was named one of Granta’s 2017 Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and sons.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam is joined by poets Richard Barnett and Luke Kennard. Richard Barnet’s WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END is an imagining of the experience of the young Ludwig Wittgenstein in the First World War, recounted in the same austere and succinct statements as the philosopher’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, the initial notes for which were taken during the conflict. The result is an affecting examination of love, duty and violence that had such a strong impact on me that it sent me back to investigate Wittgenstein’s writing with fresh eyes. Sarah Bakewell called WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END “ingenious, devastating and filled with emotional riches.”Luke Kennard’s NOTES ON THE SONNETS, revisits Shakespeare’s poetry in a chain of prose poems set in a British house party. The party is a contradictory beast—at once crushingly dull yet flecked with the absurd, at once sprawling yet intensely claustrophobic. Kennard’s poems embody these contradictions too, they somehow manage to be superficial yet profound, charmingly insolent yet glacially serious, knowingly pretentious yet deeply insecure and self-critical, and they take in almost every subject under the stars. NOTES ON THE SONNETS was a Poetry Book Society recommendation, and recently won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021.Buy WHEREVER WE ARE WHEN WE COME TO THE END here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781912436583/wherever-we-are-when-we-come-to-the-endBuy NOTES ON THE SONNETS here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781908058812/notes-on-the-sonnetsBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Richard Barnett is a poet and historian. He taught the history of science and medicine at Cambridge, UCL, and Oxford for more than a decade, and his history books include Medical London, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, and The Sick Rose, an international bestseller.His first poetry collection Seahouses was published by Valley Press in 2015, and was short-listed for the Poetry Business Prize. His next poetry publication was Wherever We Are When We Come to the End, a poetic experiment digging into the form and language of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, published in May 2021.Luke Kennard has published five collections of poetry. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. He lectures at the University of Birmingham. In 2014 he was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. His debut novel, The Transition, is published in 2017 by Fourth Estate.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buckle up! This week we welcome Katharina Volckmer discussing her wild, taboo-busting debut novel The Appointment, a transgressive, spiky, astonishingly light-footed, and very, very funny monologue about sex, nationhood, shame . . . and often all three combined.Buy The Appointment here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781913097325/the-appointmentBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds forth about her life and desires, and her struggles with her sexuality and identity. Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years, determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. In a monologue that is both razor-sharp and subversively funny, she takes us on a wide-ranging journey from outre sexual fantasies and overbearing mothers to the medicinal properties of squirrel tails and the enduring legacy of shame. With The Appointment, her audacious debut novel, Katharina Volckmer challenges our notions of what is fluid and what is fixed and injects a dose of Bernhardian snark into contemporary British fiction.*Katharina Volckmer was born in Germany in 1987. She lives in London, where she works for a literary agency. The Appointment is her first novel.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam Biles is joined by comedy-legend Armando Iannucci to discuss Pandemonium, his riotously funny, but also deeply affecting mock-epic about the mistakes made and palms-greased during the British government’s handling of the pandemic.Buy Pandemonium here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781408715086/pandemonium-some-verses-on-the-current-predicamentBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Tell, Mighty Wit, how the highest in forethought and,That tremendous plus, The Science,Saw off our panic and Globed vexationUntil a drape of calmness furled around the earthAnd beckoned a new and greater normal into each lifeFor which we give plenty gratitude and payWillingly for the vict'ry triumphMerited by these wisest gods.Pandemonium is an epic mock-heroic poem, written in response to the pandemic with all the anger and wit that Armando Iannucci brings to his vision of contemporary events. It tells the story of how Orbis Rex, Young Matt and his Circle of Friends, Queen Dido and the blind Dom'nic did battle with 'a wet and withered bat' from Wuhan.*Armando Iannucci is a writer and broadcaster who has written, directed and produced numerous critically acclaimed films, television and radio comedy shows.His screenplay for the film 'In The Loop' was nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards. His iconic series for the BBC – 'The Thick of It' – was nominated for 13 BAFTA Awards, winning 5 during its four series run. Among his own award-winning shows, he is also the co-creator and writer of the popular Steve Coogan character Alan Partridge.Armando's HBO comedy 'Veep' has picked up numerous awards, including four Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series over the last four years. His film adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'The Personal History of David Copperfield' was released in January 2020, which that year won Best Screenplay at BIFA, was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won a 'Seal of Distinction' from the US Critics' Choice Association.In 2017 he published 'Hear Me Out', a new book on classical music, and released the feature film 'The Death of Stalin', which was nominated for 2 BAFTAs and won Best Comedy at the European Film Awards.
His latest HBO series, 'Avenue 5', which stars Hugh Laurie and Josh Gad, aired on SKY in January 2020, and is currently in production for the second series.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week our guest is the brilliant Eimear McBride, discussing her first book of non-fiction Something Out of Place. Beginning with the sentiment of disgust with which, McBride argues, society regards and treats women, it develops into a blistering and astute polemic against the patriarchal framework that oppresses, coerces, sculpts controls and all too often ends the lives of half the world’s population.Buy Something Out of Place here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781788162869/something-out-of-place-women-disgustBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Eimear McBride's debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing received a number of awards including the Goldsmiths Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and Irish Novel of the Year. Her second novel The Lesser Bohemians won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She occasionally writes and reviews for Guardian, TLS and New Statesman.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week is Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Powers, discussing Bewilderment, his moving and visionary, Booker-shortlisted novel about a bereaved father and his neurodiverse son, their hunt for life on planets—both real and imaginary—and their attempts to convince others that life on our own planet is worth saving.Buy Bewilderment here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781785152634/bewilderment-shortlisted-for-the-booker-prize-2021Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Theo Byrne is a promising young scientist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son Robin is funny, loving and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from school for smashing his friend's face with a thermos.What can a father do, when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled boy is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his boy comes to him wanting an explanation for a world that is clearly in love with its own destruction? The only thing for it is to take the boy to other planets, all while fostering his son's desperate attempt to save this one.At the heart of Bewilderment lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?*Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This special podcast is a collaboration with our friends at Archipelago books, showcasing three of their wonderful poetry titles: Acrobat by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, translated by Nandana Dev Sen; Allegri by Giuseppe Ungaretti, translated by Geoffrey Brock; And Until the Lions by Karthika Naïr.Buy Acrobat by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, translated by Nandana Dev Sen here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781939810809/acrobatBuy Allegri by Giuseppe Ungaretti, translated by Geoffrey Brock here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781939810649/allegriaBuy Until the Lions by Karthika Naïr here: https://archipelagobooks.org/book/until-the-lions-echoes-from-the-mahabharata/*Famed for his brevity, Giuseppe Ungaretti’s early poems swing nimbly from the coarse matter of tram wires, alleyways, quails in bushes, and hotel landladies to the mystic shiver of pure abstraction. These are the kinds of poems that, through their numinous clarity and shifting intimations, can make a poetry-lover of the most stone-faced non-believer. Ungaretti won multiple prizes for his poetry, including the 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He was a major proponent of the Hermetic style, which proposed a poetry in which the sounds of words were of equal import to their meanings. This auditory awareness echoes through Brock’s hair-raising translations, where a man holding vigil with his dead, open-mouthed comrade, says, “I have never felt / so fastened / to life.”*A radiant collection of poetry about womanhood, intimacy, and the body politic that together evokes the arc of an ordinary life. Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s rhythmic lines explore the joys and agonies of first love, childbirth, and decay with a restless, tactile imagination, both picking apart and celebrating the rituals that make us human. When she warns, “know that blood can be easily drawn by lips,” her words tune to the fierce and biting depths of language, to the “treachery that lingers on tongue tips.” At once compassionate and unsparing, conversational and symphonic, these poems tell of a rope shivering beneath an acrobat’s nimble feet or of a twisted, blood-soaked umbilical cord – they pluck the invisible threads that bind us together.*A dazzling and eloquent reworking of the Mahabharata, the ancient Asian epic, through nineteen voices on the periphery. With daring poetic forms, Karthika Naïr breathes life into this ancient epic.In Until the Lions, Karthika Naïr retells the Mahabharata through the embodied voices of women and marginal characters, so often conquered and destroyed throughout history. She captures the richness and complexity of the Mahabharata, while illuminating lives buried beneath the edifices of one of the world’s most venerated books. Through shifting poetic forms, ranging from pantoums to Petrarchan sonnets, Naïr choreographs the cadences of stray voices. And with a passionate empathy, she tells of nameless soldiers, their despairing spouses and lovers, a canny empress, an all-powerful god, and a gender-shifting outcast warrior. Until the Lions is a kaleidoscopic, poetic tour de force. It reveals the most intimate threads of desire, greed, and sacrifice in this foundational epic.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam Biles is joined by David Runciman, Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the presenter of the hugely popular Talking Politics podcast. David's new book Confronting Leviathan is a compelling and accessible introduction to some of the most important and radical thinkers (Wolstonecraft, Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon, Fukuyama and more…) whose ideas have shaped our understanding of the modern state.Buy Confronting Leviathan here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781788167826/confronting-leviathan-a-history-of-ideasBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Based on the History Of Ideas podcast series by Talking Politics host David Runciman, A History of Ideas explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics - from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, and from revolution to lock down. While explaining the most important and often-cited ideas of thinkers such as Constant, De Tocqueville, Marx and Engels, Hayek, MacKinnon and Fukuyama, David Runciman shows how crises - revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics - generated these new ways of political thinking. This is a history of ideas to help make sense of what's happening today.*David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the presenter of the popular Talking Politics podcast. He is the author of many books about politics, including The Politics of Good Intentions (2006), Political Hypocrisy (2008) and The Confidence Trap (2013). He writes regularly about politics and current affairs for a wide range of publications including the London Review of Books.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined Anuk Arudpragasm to discuss A Passage North, his Booker-shortlisted story of age and youth, loss and survival in Sri Lanka.Buy A Passage North here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783786947/a-passage-northBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*It begins with a message: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother”s former care-giver, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances, at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an activist he fell in love with four years earlier while living in Delhi, bringing with it the stirring of distant memories and desires.As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral, so begins a passage into the soul of an island devastated by violence. Written with precision and grace, A Passage North is a poignant memorial for the missing and the dead, and a luminous meditation on time, consciousness, and the lasting imprint of the connections we make with others.*Anuk Arudpragasam was born in Colombo and currently lives between Sri Lanka and India. His debut novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize as well as the Internationaler Literaturpreis. He received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 2019.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Ian Dunt joined Adam Biles to discuss How to Be a Liberal, his immensely readable history of, and rallying cry for, “the single most radical political programme in the history of humankind.”Buy How to Be a Liberal here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781912454457/how-to-be-a-liberal-the-story-of-freedom-and-the-fight-for-its-survivalBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*The authoritarian right is taking control. From Viktor Orban in Hungary, to Brexit in Britain, to Donald Trump in America, nationalists have launched an all-out assault on liberal values. In this groundbreaking new book, political journalist Ian Dunt tells the story of liberalism, from its birth in the fight against absolute monarchy to the modern-day resistance against the new populism. In a soaring narrative that stretches from the battlefields of the English Civil War to the 2008 financial crash and beyond, this vivid, page-turning book explains the political ideas which underpin the modern world. But it is also something much more than that - it is a rallying cry for those who still believe in freedom and reason.*Ian Dunt is a columnist at the i newspaper, a regular host on the Oh God What Now podcast, a columnist for the New European and the i newspaper, and the author of two books: Brexit: What The Hell Happens Now and How To Be A Liberal. Follow Ian on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/IanDuntAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by the brilliant Leïla Slimani to discuss The Country of Others, her immensely readable, deeply moving, Steinbeckian family drama set against the grand sweep of Moroccan and French history.Buy The Country of Others here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780571361625/the-country-of-othersBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Alsace, 1944. Mathilde finds herself falling deeply in love with Amine Belhaj, a Moroccan soldier, billeted in her town, fighting for the French. After the Liberation, Mathilde leaves France, following Amine to Morocco. But life here is unrecognizable to this brave and passionate young woman. Where she she once danced, bickered with her sister, her life is now that of a farmer's wife - with all the sacrifices and vexations that brings.Suffocated by the heat, by her loneliness on the farm, by the mistrust she inspires as a foreigner and by the lack of money Mathilde grows restless. As Morocco's own struggle for independence grows daily, Mathilde and Amine find themselves caught in the crossfire . . .This story of two nations at war, two cultures at loggerheads, and one family torn apart is as tenderly observed as it is devastatingly true*Leïla Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we welcome the twice Booker-shortlisted author Tom McCarthy here to discuss The Making of Incarnation, a novel that asks some of the most pressing but also most confounding questions of our age. How much will we ever be able to understand the forces that drive the universe, and how much meaning should we ascribe to them? Will the drive for efficiency inevitably strip away our humanity? What are we left with that is particular, peculiar and that belongs to us once our lives are fed into the churning data maelstrom? And if everything can be planned and plotted down to the minutest detail, what happens when, inevitably, there’s a glitch?Buy The Making of Incarnation here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781787333307/the-making-of-incarnation-from-the-twice-booker-shorlisted-author-of-c-and-satin-islandBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com **Tom McCarthy's work has been translated into more than 20 languages and adapted for cinema, theatre and radio. His third novel C was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Walter Scott Prize and the European Literature Prize and his fourth, Satin Island, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize by Yale University. McCarthy is also author of the study Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and of the essay collection Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. He lives in Berlin.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we welcome one of the most innovative and fearless writers at work today, Claire-Louise Bennett, here to discuss CHECKOUT 19 a novel that explores class, freedom, adolescence, transcendence, sexual politics and artistic synthesis.Buy Checkout 19 here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781787333550/checkout-19Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com **Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and her debut book, Pond, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Claire-Louise's fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including White Review, Stinging Fly, gorse, Harper's Magazine, Vogue Italia, Music & Literature, and New York Times Magazine.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us as we take a plunge into the wild mind of David Keenan and his latest novel, the hallucinatory masterpiece Monument Maker.“In a dizzying gyroscopic vortex of inner archeology, David Keenan sifts through spiraling past lives to unearth his provocative vision of the future. A colossus of imagination” LENNY KAYEBuy Monument Maker here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781474617093/monument-makerBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com *David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author two novels, the cult classic This Is Memorial Device (Faber & Faber), which won the Collyer Bristow/London Magazine Award for Debut Fiction 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and For The Good Times (Faber & Faber). He is also the author of England's Hidden Reverse (Strange Attractor Press), a history of the UK's post-punk/Industrial underground, as well as To Run Wild In It (Rough Trade Books), an experimental novella, and the co-designer, alongside Sophy Hollington, of his own tarot pack, the Autonomic Tarot (Rough Trade Books).Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our first podcast of la rentrée we were delighted to be joined by Elif Shafak, with us to discuss her mesmerising new novel The Island of Missing Trees, a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.Buy The Island of Missing Trees. here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780241434994/the-island-of-missing-trees-the-top-10-sunday-times-bestsellerBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com **Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 55 languages. Her latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall’s inaugural book club, The Reading Room. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford where she is an honorary fellow.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the S&Co podcast takes its summer break for a few weeks, we leave you with this fascinating and funny conversation between Pola Oloixarac and John Freeman, recorded on the bookshop terrace on 19th July. Many thanks to John, Pola and the NYU Creative Writing Program for making this very special evening possible.*Buy Pola Oloixarac’s books here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/search?q=Pola+Oloixarac&type=booksBuy John Freeman’s There's a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780593314692/theres-a-revolution-outside-my-love-letters-from-a-crisisBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Pola Oloixarac was born in Buenos Aires, where she studied Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She's the author of the novels Savage Theories, Dark Constellations and Mona. She's the recipient of the 2020 Eccles Centre Prize, and was named one of Granta Best of Young Spanish Novelists in 2010. Her pieces about culture and politics have appeared in The New York Times, BBC and La Nación, where she writes a political column. She lives in Barcelona.John Freeman is the founder of Freeman's and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. The author and editor of ten books, his work includes the anthologies Tales of Two Planets and The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story; a book-length essay, Dictionary of the Undoing, and two collections of poems; Maps and The Park. His most recent book, co-edited with Tracy K. Smith, is There's a Revolution Outside My Love. He is Artist in Residence at NYU.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second episode from our first in-store event in 18 months, Katie Kitamura discusses her deeply affecting, Barack Obama-approved, fourth novel Intimacies with S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.Buy Intimacies here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781787332003/intimacies-a-barack-obama-summer-2021-reading-pickBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Katie Kitamura's most recent novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. It was named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications, translated into 16 languages, and is being adapted for film. Her two previous novels, Gone to the Forest and The Longshot were both finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Kitamura has written for publications including the New York Times Book Review, Guardian, BOMB, and Triple Canopy. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For our first in-store event for more than eighteen months we were joined by two of our favourite novelists, Jakuta Alikavazovic and Katie Kitamura.In this first episode from that evening Jakuta Alikavazovic discusses her extraordinary, crepuscular novel Night As It Falls with S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.Buy Night As It Falls here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780571342266/night-as-it-fallsBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Jakuta Alikavazovic is a French writer of Bosnian and Montenegrin origins. Her debut novel, Corps Volatils, won the Prix Goncourt in 2008 for Best First Novel. She has translated works by Ben Lerner, David Foster Wallace and Anna Burns into French. She lives in Paris and writes a regular column for the daily newspaper Libération.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we were joined by Laurent Binet, discussing Civilisations, his hugely entertaining counterfactual novel in which Atahualpa leads an army of two hundred Incas to Europe . . . Buy Civilisations here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781787302297/civilisationsBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes. The 7th Function of Language won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallié. Civilisations is a bestseller that has won the Grand Prix de l'Académie française.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, Adam was joined by Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, a collective of self-taught internet sleuths who have solved some of the biggest crimes of our time, from the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 over the Ukraine to the sourcing of weapons in the Syrian Civil War and the identification of the Salisbury poisoners.Buy We Are Bellingcat here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781526615732/we-are-bellingcat-an-intelligence-agency-for-the-peopleBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Eliot Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat and pioneer of online open source investigation, a new investigative methodology that has significantly impacted a range of fields and specialisations, from journalism to justice and accountability. Starting as a blogger and entirely self-taught, Higgins' work has now opened up new ways to investigate a wide range of topics, with Higgins' own investigative work covering topics such at the downing of Malaysian Airlines 17 over Ukraine in July 17, chemical weapon use in Syria and the application of these new investigation techniques to the work of organisations like the International Criminal Court, where Higgins' is part of the Technology Advisory Board. *Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joining Adam Biles this week is behavioural and data scientist Dr Pragya Agarwal discussing (M)otherhood her meticulously researched, searingly honest investigation into motherhood and fertility.Buy (M)otherhood here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781838853167/motherhoodBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist. After gaining her PhD from the University of Nottingham, she was a senior academic in US and UK universities for over twelve years. As well as numerous research papers, she is the author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias and Wish We Knew What to Say: Talking with Children about Race. Sway was picked as a ‘best science book of 2020’, Guardian Book of the Week and was shortlisted for the Transmission Prize. A passionate campaigner for racial and gender equality, Pragya is a two-time TEDx speaker, a TEDx Women organiser and the founder of a research think-tank ‘The 50 Percent Project’. As a freelance journalist, she writes regularly for the Guardian, Prospect, Forbes, Huffington Post, BBC Science Focus and New Scientist among others. She has also written for AEON, Scientific American and the Wellcome Trust.@DrPragyaAgarwal | drpragyaagarwal.com*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re joined by Pulitzer-prizewinners Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan to discuss Francis Bacon: Revelations, their biography of one of the most radical, shocking and slippery artists of the 20th century.Buy Francis Bacon Revelations here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780007298419/francis-bacon-revelationsBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*The biographers Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan have spent decades in the art and publishing worlds of New York, Mark as a veteran art critic and Annalyn as the former arts editor of Newsweek and a former music critic.Their first book, de Kooning: An American Master, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2005, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book award for biography. The New York Times named it one of the 10 best books of 2005.The authors live in New York City. They have two daughters, two cats, and one grandson.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we were joined by Jennifer Lucy Allan, author of one of the most peculiar and moving non-fiction books of the year. The Foghorn’s Lament is one woman’s quest to uncover and understand the booming, lonely machine that soundtracks the oceans.Buy The Foghorn’s Lament here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781474615037/the-foghorns-lamentBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Jennifer Lucy Allan is a writer, journalist and broadcaster with a PhD in foghorns. She has been a journalist for over a decade, writing on underground and experimental music for publications including The Guardian, The Quietus, and The Wire, and was previously The Wire’s Online Editor. She is a presenter on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and wrote and presented Life, Death and the Foghorn for BBC Radio 4. She also runs the archival record label Arc Light Editions. THE FOGHORN’S LAMENT is her first book.*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were delighted to welcome back Hari Kunzru to discuss his recent novel Red Pill, a journey into the moral darkness of our times, and one of the most exciting and provocative books of the past year.Buy Red Pill here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781471194474/red-pillBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His new novel Red Pill will be published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone, coming in September from Pushkin Industries. He lives in New York City.Follow Hari on Twitter: @harikunzru*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-timeListen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=1jyKZFg2QS6RpVIfoCLLPQ&dl_branch=1 Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were joined by two of the most radical and exciting voices in anglophone literature, Rob Doyle and Rachel Kushner, for a discussion of art, class, truth and how much of a ‘sick puppy’ Georges Bataille really was.Buy Rob Doyle’s Threshold here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781526607089/thresholdBuy Rachel Kushner’s The Hard Crowd here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781787333109/the-hard-crowdBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of three novels: the Booker- and NBCC Award–shortlisted The Mars Room; The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times top ten book of 2013; and Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award. She grew up in San Francisco and lives in Los Angeles.Rob Doyle was born in Dublin. His first novel, Here Are the Young Men, was published in 2014. It was chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times, Irish Times and Independent, and was among Hot Press magazine's '20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016'. Doyle has adapted it for a film with director Eoin Macken. Doyle's collection of short stories, This is the Ritual, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Doyle is the editor of the The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press), and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep (Broken Dimanche Press). His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Vice, TLS, Dublin Review, and many other publications, and he writes a weekly books column for the Irish Times. He teaches on the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Limerick, and lives the rest of the year in Berlin.Follow Rob on Twitter here: @RobDoyle1*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we are joined by Niven Govinden and Musa Okwonga. On the face of it, their new novels—"Diary of a Film" and "In the End it was All About Love"—couldn’t seem more different, and yet they dialogue in many interesting ways. In conversation with Adam Biles, they talk art, love, cities, sexuality, belonging and food.Buy Diary of a Film here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780349700717/diary-of-a-filmBuy In the End it Was All About Love here: http://roughtradebooks.com/books/in-the-end-it-was-all-about-love-2/*In addition to Diary of a Film, Niven Govinden is the author of five previous novels, most recently This Brutal House, which was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and shortlisted for the Polari and Gordon Burn Prizes.Follow Niven on Instagram: @niven_govindenMusa Okwonga is a writer, broadcaster and musician. The co-host of the Stadio football podcast, he has published one collection of poetry and three books about football, the first of which, A Cultured Left Foot, was nominated for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He has three books forthcoming in 2021: In The End, It Was All About Love (Rough Trade), a memoir set in Berlin; One of Them (Unbound), a memoir about his five years at Eton College; and Striking Out (Scholastic), a children’s novel written in collaboration with and based on the life of Ian Wright. Musa’s work has appeared in various outlets, including Africa Is A Country, The Byline Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist and The Ringer. He lives in Berlin.Follow Musa on Twitter: @Okwonga*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Adam Biles was joined by Ece Temelkuran to discuss her thrilling new book “Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now” a unique and bold manifesto for how all of us can rise to the political and social challenges the world faces.Buy TOGETHER here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780008393816/togetherBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators, and her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman and Der Spiegel. She has been twice recognized as Turkey’s most read political columnist, and twice rated as one of the ten most influential people in social media (with 3 million twitter followers). Her recent novel Women Who Blow on Knots won the 2017 Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award.Follow Ece Temelkuran on Twitter: @ETemelkuran*Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were thrilled to be joined by Rosa Rankin-Gee to discuss her striking second novel Dreamland, a postcard from a near-future (don’t say post-apocalyptic!) Britain that’s may be closer than we think. Hosted by Adam BilesBuy DREAMLAND here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781471193811/dreamlandBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Rosa Rankin-Gee lives between Ramsgate and South London. Her first novel The Last Kings of Sark won Shakespeare & Company’s Paris Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Vogue, the Paris Review, and Esquire, among others.Follow Rosa on Twitter: @rosarankingeeAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back! Welcome to the relaunched S&Co podcast. For the first episode after a long hiatus, we were thrilled to be joined (remotely!) by Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden to discuss their formally inventive and thematically bold new novels LUCKENBOOTH and MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH. Hosted by Adam Biles.Buy LUCKENBOOTH here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780434023318/luckenboothBuy MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781838851194/mrs-death-misses-deathBrowse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstoreBecome a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com*Jenni Fagan was born in Scotland. She graduated from Greenwich University and won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway MFA programme. She has just completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. A published poet and novelist, she has won awards from Creative Scotland, Dewar Arts, Scottish Screen and Scottish Book Trust among others, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Jenni was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists after the publication of her debut novel, The Panopticon, which was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize. Her adaptation of The Panopticon was staged by the National Theatre of Scotland to great acclaim. The Sunlight Pilgrims, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award and the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award, and saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards. She lives in Edinburgh with her son.Follow Jenni on Twitter: @Jenni_FaganSalena Godden is one of Britain’s best loved poets and performers. She is also an activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist and is widely anthologised. She has published several volumes of poetry, the latest of which was Pessimism is for Lightweights, and a literary childhood memoir, Springfield Road.Mrs Death Misses Death is her debut novel. A BBC Radio 4 documentary following Godden’s progress on the novel over twelve months was broadcast in 2018. In November 2020 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.Follow Salena on Twitter: @salenagoddenVisit Salena’s website: www.salenagodden.co.ukAdam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode, we’re thrilled to be collaborating with the brilliant Fitzcarraldo Editions to bring you an exclusive extract from the audiobook of their modern classic Pond, performed by its author Claire-Louise Bennett.You can buy the audiobook from the publisher’s website www.fitzcarraldoeditions.com, and of course you can buy a physical copy of Pond from our online store, www.shakespeareandcompany.com where you can also find all manner of new and rare books, gifts, and tote bags, which we ship from Paris to wherever you are in the world.About Claire-Louise BennettClaire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire in the southwest of England. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council Ireland and Galway City Council. Pond is her first collection of stories.Music, as always, by Alex Freiman from his album, Play it Gentle, available on our online store: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/search?q=Alex+freiman&type=books Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were delighted to welcome Karthika Naïr and Marilyn Hacker back to the bookshop. During lockdown, Marilyn and Karthika began writing Renga — a collaborative form of Japanese poetry — to each other, building up a beautiful and compelling body of work that engages with both the micro and the macro of this unprecedented moment. This meeting was the first time that these close friends had been in the same room as each other for several months, and their readings ring with the sorrow of separation but also the joy of rediscovery.*Renga through a Lockdown: Shortly after France declared a full lockdown in March 2020, Marilyn Hacker invited Karthika Naïr to join her in creating a renga. Renga, literally “linked poem”, is the ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, which has evolved a little through the ages. Poets take turns to compose alternating tanka (5-7-5 and 7-7 syllabled-lines in the stanza) and each poet begins their opening line with word/s or idea/s from the preceding poem. Marilyn and Karthika’s renga are chronicles of their daily lives through the months of lockdown, triggered as much by immediate experiences in Paris as by echoes and concerns from friends and family in the US, Lebanon, India and elsewhere. And while both live in Paris, the distance between their homes (one in the 3rd arrondissement, the other in the 10th) - usually one of a few miles - seemed to multiply in this new world, with neighbourhoods transforming into distinct, new, terrain. If you’d like to see a video of some of these readings, keep an eye on the social media of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival.*Marilyn Hacker is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Blazons ( 2019) and A Stranger’s Mirror(2015) , a book of essays, Unauthorized Voices (2010),  a collaborative book, Diaspo/Renga, written with Deema K. Shehabi (2014) and  seventeen books of translations of French and Francophone poets, most recently Samira Negrouche’s The Olive Trees’ Jazz (2020). She received the 2009 American PEN Award for poetry in translation, and the international Argana Prize for Poetry from the Beit as-Sh’ir/ House of Poetry in Morocco in 2011. She lives in Paris. Find more of Marilyn’s work here:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marilyn-hackerKarthika Naïr is the author of several books, including The Honey Hunter, illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet. She has helmed the scripts of several dance productions, such as the multiple-award-winning DESH (2011), Akram Khan’s dance solo. Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, her reimagining in verse of the Mahabharata, won the 2015 Tata Literature Live! Award for Book of the Year (Fiction), and was highly commended at the 2016 Forward Prizes (UK). Naïr’s poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals across the world, including Granta, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Magazine, Indian Literature, The Wolf, and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. She is a 2012 Sangam House Fellow, a 2013 Toji Foundation Fellow and was awarded a Villa Marguerite Yourcenar Fellowship in 2015. Her latest book is the collaborative Over and Under Ground in Mumbai & Paris (2018), a travelogue in verse, written with Sampurna Chattarji, and illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet and Roshni Vyam.Find more of Karthika’s work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150393/remaindering-habitsAnd here:https://www.danceumbrella.co.uk/2017/08/29/six-degrees-otherness-part-2/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were delighted to be joined by Lindsey Tramuta to discuss her second book The New Parisienne—her fascinating follow-up to The New Paris—in which she explores the women and ideas shaping the French capital. We have a limited number of signed copies of The New Parisienne available in our online store: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/s/9781419742811/the-new-parisienne-the-women-ideas-shaping-paris Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the Shakespeare and Company Podcast. We’re thrilled to return with a reading from a dear friend of the bookshop, John Freeman, reading from his new book of poetry The Park, a collection inspired by the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.*Thanks for listening! We're now able to ship orders again. If you want to support Shakespeare and Company through this tough period, and bring a little taste of the bookshop to wherever you are in the world, please consider placing an order for a book or a gift, subscribing to a Year of Reading, or purchasing a gift voucher for future use. Visit our website www.shakespeareandcompany.com Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.