London Review Bookshop Podcast

Laleh Khalili?s new book The Corporeal Life of Seafaring (Mack) draws on her own experiences to describe with care and imagination the material and physical realities of contemporary commerce at sea, detailing (in the words of Steve Edwards) ?the labouring bodies ? hands, legs, and eyes; flesh and soul; suffering and solidarity ? that make the world go round. In the process, the connections and divisions of the world economy come into view.? Khalili was in conversation with LRB contributing editor James Butler, the co-founder of Novara Media.

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Fleur Adcock?s sly, laconic poems have been delighting audiences since her 1964 debut The Eye of the Hurricane. Her Collected Poems draws together the work of sixty years; as Fiona Sampson writes, ?Informality and immediacy are good ways to remake a world; and Adcock?s style has not dated in the half-century since her debut.? Adcock was joined in conversation at the Bookshop with her publisher, Neil Astley, and read from her Collected Poems.

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Holly Pester discusses her debut novel, The Lodgers, with Nathalie Olah.

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?Here is a wasteland / of parched aesthetics / patched up with modern tubes? ? Rachael Allen?s long-awaited second collection, God Complex, is a long narrative poem describing the breakdown of a relationship against a backdrop of environmental degradation and toxicity. In this episode, she reads from the collection and was joined in conversation with the poet Lucy Mercer, whose first collection is Emblem (Prototype, 2022).

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Lara Pawson discusses her new book Spent Light with Jennifer Hodgson.

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Paul Muldoon reads from and talks about his collection Howdie-Skelp.

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?Our history of giving up ? that is to say, our attitude towards it, our obsession with it, our disavowal of its significance ? may be a clue to something we should really call our histories and not our selves?, wrote Adam Phillips in a 2022 LRB piece, ?On Giving Up?. Now developed and expanded into a book of the same title, Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up, and helps us to address the central question: what must we give up in order to feel more alive? Phillips was joined in conversation by Dame Hermione Lee.

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Lavinia Greenlaw?s new book The Vast Extent is a collection of ?exploded essays?, about light and image, sight and the unseen, covering wide territories with the scientific precision and ease of access which characterises her poetry. She was joined by Jennifer Higgie, author of The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World.

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Seán Hewitt?s new poetry collection Rapture?s Road follows hard on the heels of Tongues of Fire ? the winner of the 2021 Laurel Prize ? and the bestselling memoir All Down Darkness Wide. Like its predecessors, the collection confronts dark and difficult subject matter in startlingly beautiful lyric language, ?exquisitely calm? in the words of Max Porter. Hewitt read from the collection and was in conversation with Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth, whose long-awaited new novel Enlightenment is coming out in May.

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Emily Wilson?s translation of the Odyssey, published in 2017, the first into English by a woman, was hailed as a ?revelation? by the New York Times and a ?cultural landmark? by the Guardian. With her translation of the Iliad, ten years in the making, she has given us a complete Homer for a new generation.

Emily Wilson, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is a regular contributor to the LRB and the host of one of our Close Readings series of podcasts, Among the Ancients. Wilson was joined in conversation by Edith Hall, professor at Durham University and the author of many acclaimed books on Ancient Greek culture and its influence on modernity. The event was chaired by Wilson?s Close Readings co-host, Thomas Jones, and passages from Wilson?s Iliad were read by acclaimed actors Juliet Stevenson and Tobias Menzies.

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Mary Jean Chan reads from their new collection, Bright Fear, and discuss it with Andrew McMillan.

Chan?s debut, Fleche, won the Costa Book Award for Poetry in 2019. Bright Fear extends and develops that collection?s themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy, while remaining deeply attuned to moments of tenderness, beauty and grace.

Andrew McMillan?s most recent collection is pandemonium (Cape, 2021); a novel, Pity, is forthcoming in 2024. Together with Chan, he edited the landmark anthology 100 Queer Poems(Penguin).

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Who would you invite to a dinner party? In The Dinner Table, a delicious collection of great food writing from past and present, talented writer-chefs Kate Young and Ella Risbridger will introduce you to Samuel Pepys on the glories of parmesan, Shirley Jackson on washing up, Katherine Mansfield on party food, Nigella Lawson on mayonnaise, Michelle Zauner on kimchi and a great deal else besides.

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Part script, part novel, part manual, Sorcerer (Prototype) is the latest unclassifiable book written in collaboration between the artist and writer Ed Atkins and the poet and critic Steven Zultanski ? a gentle, contemplative work about the pleasures of conversation, being with others, and being alone. ?Unlike many narratives, Sorcerer does not put crisis and conflict at the centre of the story?, write Atkins and Zultanski, describing their theme as ?the intractability of reality ? both its resistance to clear meaning and its sweetness, weirdness.? Atkins and Zultanski were in conversation with the art writer and journalist Emily LaBarge.

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In Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care, Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, continues the radical exploration of how the personal and the political interact. As Baroness Helena Kennedy KC writes, ?Both memoir and manifesto, this wonderful book charts a personal history of feminist socialism - and, with her usual humane wisdom, our author points the way to a better politics.? She was joined in conversation by Amelia Horgan, author of Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism.

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In Someone Else's Empire Tom Stevenson, a contributing editor at the LRB, dispels the potent myth of Britain as a global player punching above its weight on the world stage, arguing instead that its foreign policy has for a long time been in thrall to the wishes and interests of the United States.

He talks about his book with writer, filmmaker, publisher and activist Tariq Ali.

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Mathias Enard?s latest novel, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild takes us to the marshlands of South West France in a Rabelaisian celebration of life, love and death. Juan Gabriel Vasquez writes of him ?Every novel by Mathias Enard reminds me of the reasons why I read fiction. He is ambitious, erudite, full of life, and a wonderful stylist to boot. He is one of the great novelists of our time.' He reads from his book and talks about it with Chris Power.

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In her most personal book to date, Love and Money, Sex and Death (Verso) McKenzie Wark writes with her characteristic acuity about gender transition, communism, history, art, memory and the journey of discovering who one really wants to be.Wark talks about that journey with Lauren John Joseph, author of At Certain Points We Touch.

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?Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas? wrote Jude Cook in the Guardian, praising Isabel Waidner?s Sterling Karat Gold. Waidner reads from their latest novel Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, and talks about it with academic, performer and activist Diarmuid Hester, whose forthcoming book Nothing Ever Just Disappears Waidner has described as ?insightful, delightful, and enlightening: an essential entrant into the queer canon.?

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Poet and editor of Bad Betty Press Amy Acre reads from and talks about her debut collection Mothersong (Bloomsbury). Poignant and powerful, her work explores motherhood, grief, trauma, recovery and what it means to be a female artist. She's in conversation with Joelle Taylor, author of the prize-winning poetry collection C+nto (Telegram), who has written of Mothersong: ?Amy Acre is one of the best poets of her generation. Pure cinema, raw heart, and unparalleled technique. Read this.?

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Historical fiction is having a moment, and at the forefront are two of 2023?s most hotly anticipated novels: Zadie Smith?s The Fraud and Adam Thirlwell?s The Future Future. Smith and Thirlwell discussed their approaches to fiction and the ways in which prose can ?sandblast the dust off history?, as Polly Stenham writes about The Future Future.

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In Shattered Nation, Oxford Professor of Geography Danny Dorling meticulously documents how Britain over the last 40 years has been transformed by incompetence, avarice and short-termism from one of the world?s leading economies, with widely admired public services, into Europe?s most unequal society, afflicted by staggering levels of deprivation and social division. Dorling was joined in conversation by Leo Hollis, author of The Stones of London and Inheritance.

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Kehinde Andrews continues the work he began in The New Age of Empire with The Psychosis of Whiteness (Allen Lane), a wry and piercing guide to retaining sanity in a racist world, which Ron Ramdin has described as ?a remarkable and enriching work which shines a light on many dark places?. He discussed the book with journalist and writer Afua Hirsch, whose own Decolonising My Body is forthcoming from Square Peg in October.

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Terrance Hayes and Nick Laird read from and talk about their recent books So to Speak (Penguin) and Up Late (Faber). Hayes, describing Laird, praises his ?truth-telling that?s political, existential and above all, emotional?; Laird writing about Hayes notes that his invention ?allows his poetry to house almost anything, from the political to the sensual, from a magic goat to a talking cat?. Join us to celebrate two of the year?s most hotly anticipated collections.

The episode starts with Laird reading the title poem, Up Late, from his new collection.

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Ian Nairn?s Modern Buildings in London was first published in 1964 and now appears, 40 years after his death, in a new edition from Notting Hill with an introduction by Travis Elborough, ?one of Britain?s finest pop culture historians? according to the Guardian.

Elborough was joined by architectural historian Gillian Darley and architect Charles Holland to discuss Nairn?s life, work and enduring legacy.

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Helen Macdonald (H is for Hawk) has collaborated with musician and writer Sin Blaché to write a dazzling science fiction debut. Author Paraic O?Donnell describes Prophet (Jonathan Cape) as ?a hyperkinetic headrush of a novel that proves its organic bona fides by getting you drunk with ideas before casually and cataclysmically breaking your heart.? Macdonald and Blaché were at the shop to reading from and talking about their book with Isabel Waidner.

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Caret continues the adventures of the irrepressible John Cromer, begun in Pilcrow (2008) and continued in Cedilla (2011) ? part of Adam Mars-Jones? ?semi-infinite? novel series, praised by one reviewer as ?a genuine, almost miraculous oddity?.

Mars-Jones was in conversation with the journalist and critic Leo Robson.

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For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it?

Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Lauren Elkin's Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims.

E?lkin talks about it with Vanessa Peterson, Associate Editor, frieze magazine.

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A holistic and revealing account of the inspirations, passions and practices of one of the country?s foremost contemporary artists, Art is Magic finds Jeremy Deller reflecting on the entirety of his career, his life and his art. Deller was joined in conversation with writer Michael Bracewell, author of Unfinished Business.

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In Tessa Hadley?s new collection, After the Funeral (Jonathan Cape), small events have huge consequences. As psychologically astute as they are emotionally dense, these stories illuminate the enduring conflicts between responsibility and freedom, power and desire, convention and subversion, reality and dreams. Hadley was in conversation with Geoff Dyer. 

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F?our Faber poets will join us to read from their recent collections.

Describing Declan Ryan's long-awaited debut, Crisis Actor, Liz Berry called it ?elegant and heartaching?. Maggie Millner?s Couplets, also a debut, is a novel in verse, a unique repurposing of the 18th century rhyming couplet into a thrilling story of queer desire. Hannah Sullivan?s follow-up to her T.S. Eliot Prize-winning Three Poems, Was it For This, also consists of three long poems, on subjects ranging from London and the Grenfell fire to new motherhood. The title poem of Nick Laird?s new collection, Up Late, won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Terrance Hayes has characterised his work as containing 'a truth-telling that?s political, existential, and above all, emotional'.

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Olivia Laing, Ken Worpole and Jon Day discuss Colin Ward and David Crouch's 1988 classic of social and oral history The Allotment, long out of print but finally reissued by the indefatigable Little Toller Books.

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Two of Britain?s most exciting short story writers joined in conversation to celebrate the release of their highly-acclaimed debuts in paperback. Faber author Jem Calder and Edge Hill Prize winner Saba Sams read from and discussed their stories with Tom Conaghan, publisher of Scratch Books.

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Meat Love, the latest book-length essay by Amber Husain (following on from 2021?s Replace Me), explores how meat-eating has become irretrievably enmeshed with capitalist desire, in what Sophie Lewis has described as ?an exquisitely-crafted little hand grenade lobbed at the gentrification of the carnivorous mind?.

She is in conversation with Rebecca May Johnson, whose Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen (Pushkin, 2022) touches on many of the same revolutionary themes. Johnson is an essayist and critic, and senior editor at the online magazine Vittles.

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Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery ? ?Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman?s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945?1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, ?Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution. Penman was joined in conversation by Adam Mars-Jones.

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K Patrick?s Mrs. S is one of the most eagerly awaited debuts of the year, having already secured for its author a spot on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. A queer romance set in the staffroom of an elite English boarding school, Lillian Fishman has described it as ?a voluptuous performance in the art of withholding?. Patrick was in conversation with editor and writer Amelia Abraham, whose most recent book, Queer Intentions (Macmillan) was nominated for a Polari First Book award in 2020.

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M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical and literary realism. Wish I Was Here is his first work of memoir ? an ?anti-memoir? ? written in his mid-seventies with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style, fresh after winning the Goldsmiths Prize in 2020 for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Harrison was joined in conversation with writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson.

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In The Plague (Fitzcarraldo) Jacqueline Rose who has, in the words of Edward Said ?no peer among critics of her generation? uses the recent experience of the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the writings of Simone Weil to investigate how we might learn to live with death when it intrudes more closely than we might like on our lived experience. Rose was in conversation about life and death with James Butler, contributing editor at the LRB.

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This Ragged Grace tells the story of Octavia Bright?s journey through recovery from alcohol addiction, and the parallel story of her father?s descent into Alzheimer?s. Looking back over this time, each of the seven chapters explores the feelings and experiences of the corresponding year of her recovery, tracing the shift in emotion and understanding that comes with the deepening connection to this new way of life. B?right was joined in conversation by Olivia Laing, author of Everybody.

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Maureen McLane?s poetry has been praised for its deftness, intelligence and grace under extreme pressure. Her new collection, the aptly named What You Want, draws on these strengths to produce something remarkable and new.

In a rare UK appearance, she reads from her work and talks to Will Harris, who also reads from his new collection Brother Poem (Granta). Harris has won the Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem and Best First Collection (for his debut, 2019's RENDANG), and more importantly, the LRB Bookshop Poetry Pamphlet Pick of the Year for 2016.

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Novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy read from and spoke about her novel August Blue, a mesmerising story of how identities, coalesce, collide and collapse. She was joined in conversation about August Blue with the psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz, author of The Examined Life.

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Marriage has been an institution for centuries but why this highly contested and ancient practice has remained relevant to so many is by no means certain. What are we really talking about when we talk about marriage? And what are we really doing when we say, 'I do'? In On Marriage (Hamish Hamilton), Devorah Baum draws on philosophy, film, fiction, comedy, psychoanalysis, music and poetry, to consider the marriage plot. Baum was in conversation with Hisham Matar.

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When novelist and cultural critic Lynne Tillman?s mother became ill with the rare condition of normal pressure hydrocephalus she became entirely dependent on Lynne, her sisters and other caregivers, reversing the normal roles of parent and child. In Mothercare, Tillman describes, without flinching, the unexpected, heartbreaking, and anxious eleven years of caring for a sick parent. T?illman was joined by Michael Bracewell, author of Unfinished Business.

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Claudia Rankine?s Plot, an early work published for the first time in the UK this month, is a meditation on pregnancy and the changes it heralds: the potential bodily cost, the loss of self, the sense of impending stasis. It is a genre-defying text, a collection of fragments, dreams and conversations with all of the hallmarks of Rankine?s subsequent work, Citizen, Don?t Let Me Be Lonely and Just Us. 

Rankine will be in discussion with Nicola Rollock, author of The Racial Code.

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Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - which shaped Amy Key's expectations of love - as an anchor, Arrangements in Blue elegantly honours a life lived completely by, and for, oneself. Joined by Megan Nolan, the author of Acts of Desperation, Key discussed the many forms of connection and care that often go unnoticed.

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A landmark work of oral history written in the spirit of Nell Dunn, Porn: An Oral History (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is a thrilling, thought-provoking, revelatory, revealing, joyfully informative and informal exploration of a subject that has always retained an element of the taboo. ?Polly Barton is a brilliant, learned and daring writer,? writes Joanna Kavenna, author of ZED. She was in conversation, brilliantly, learnedly and daringly, with Amelia Abraham, author of Queer Intentions (Picador).

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In Revolutionary Spring (Allen Lane), a series of brilliant set-pieces, pre-eminent European historian Christopher Clark brings back to our attention the extraordinary events of the Spring of 1848. From Paris to Vienna to Budapest to Berlin to Rome to Palermo, a whole continent was embroiled in struggle, hope, revolutionary fervour and ultimately reaction.

Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, Sir Christopher will be in conversation with Katja Hoyer, a visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and author of Blood and Iron and Beyond the Wall.

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New York in the late 1960s: Mae escapes a run-down an apartment, an alcoholic mother and her mother?s occasional boyfriend to a new life as a typist for Andy Warhol, transcribing conversations with his friends and associates to provide the material for an unconventional novel. A mordantly funny investigation of celebrity, obsession, womanhood and sexuality, Nothing Special (Bloomsbury) is itself an unconventional debut novel, following on from Flattery?s acclaimed short story collection Show Them a Good Time.

Nicole Flattery discusses her novel with Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond and Checkout 19.

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Brenda Shaughnessy?s Liquid Flesh (Bloodaxe) gathers together poems from across her first five collections, as thrilling and unpredictable as any contemporary American poet. Writing about her work in the Boston Review, Richard Howard says that ?when anything is as fresh as this diction, as free as these associations, as fraught as these passions, it is not descriptions or definitions which are wanted but the thing itself, the new words in new places, the necessary instigations?. Brenda Shaughnessy was in conversation with Amy Key, whose second collection, Isn?t Forever, came out with Bloodaxe in 2018, and whose new book inspired by Joni Mitchell's Blue, is forthcoming in spring 2023.

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In Ruth Padel?s latest pamphlet, Watershed, the poet reflects on the natural world, on water, and on the psychology of denialism, particularly where it concerns the climate crisis. Padel was joined in reading and conversation by Sean Borodale, whose latest pamphlet is Re-Dreaming Sylvia Plath as a Queen Bee.

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In Toy Fights poet Don Paterson recounts his childhood in working-class Dundee. This is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored. ?A tremendously engaging memoir? writes William Boyd, ?seasoned with Don Paterson's customary wit, total recall and love of language. A classic of its kind.?

Paterson talks about the book with poet Declan Ryan, whose whose debut collection, Crisis Actor, will be published by Faber in July. 

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