London Review Bookshop Podcast

While recuperating in hospital in Mexico, Flora meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments. The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors. Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound. Then things take an unexpected turn…

Ardijis was reading from The Shadow of the Object and in conversation with Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine, whose most recent book was The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World.

You can buy a copy of The Shadow of the Object from the London Review Bookshop.
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To celebrate the publication of their respective new books, So Mayer (Bad Language) and Sarah Schulman (The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity) discussed the radical affinities between their work in exposing the power structures underpinning both the ways in which we communicate, and the language we use to do so.

You can buy Bad Language and The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity from the London Review Bookshop.
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Margaret Drabble’s new collection, The Great Good Places, is an omnium gatherum of essays, stories and memoir, drawing on a lifetime’s worth of insight and wisdom. ‘Generous, perceptive, and good-humoured, Margaret Drabble is always a delight to read’, wrote Joan Bakewell; The Great Good Places has all these qualities in evidence. Drabble was in conversation with Tessa Hadley, whose most recent novel is The Party (Vintage).

You can buy a copy of The Great Good Places from the London Review Bookshop.
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What Am I, A Deer?, Polly Barton’s debut novel, takes on the vagaries of translation – linguistic translation, self-translation, and reinvention – which she’s previously explored in the much-loved Fifty Sounds, also published by Fitzcarraldo. ‘The protagonist of What Am I, A Deer? finds herself both Schrödinger and his cat on entering the Frankfurt tram, the office, and the ‘black box’ of the karaoke booth; inside and outside simultaneously, trying to figure out whether she exists and in a state of tingling oscillation’, writes Jen Calleja. ‘Polly Barton is the maestra of controlled dissolution.’

You can buy a copy of What Am I, A Deer? from the London Review Bookshop.
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In an audacious new take on the campus novel Luke Kennard’s protagonist, a penniless out-of-work actor, takes on a job unlike any other. He is hired to sit silently at the back of a lecture hall, concealed within a black bag. Black Bag (John Murray) examines, hilariously, modern masculinity, romance, identity and much else besides. ‘Such a smart and philosophical novel really has no business being this entertaining’ writes Anna Metcalfe. ‘Black Bag is hilarious, profound, tender and deranged. A deeply cathartic read for anyone seeking the funny side of the total decimation of the arts.’ Luke Kennard was in conversation with fellow poet and novelist Will Eaves.

You can buy a copy of Black Bag from the London Review Bookshop.
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