London Review Bookshop Podcast

One Lark, One Horse is Michael Hofmann’s first new collection of poetry for almost two decades, and more than justifies the wait; Stephen Romer writes that Hofmann has given us ‘a handle on our own helplessness, our fecklessness and unease’, and George Szirtes more succinctly has described his writing as ‘a poetry of nerves’. He read from the new collection, and talked about it with Declan Ryan, w...

In Spring, the third instalment of her seasonal quartet, Ali Smith continues her unique investigation into our country’s past present and future, uniting Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times and a woman trapped in modern times by means of an extended riff on Shakespeare’s least rea...

We hosted the shortlisted authors for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019 in an evening of readings at the London Review Bookshop. Rewarding the most exciting and interesting literature published by small presses in the UK and Ireland, the Republic of Consciousness Prize has previously been awarded to John Keene (Counternarratives, Fitzcarraldo Editions) and Eley Williams (Attrib. and other s...

Tessa Hadley's new novel Late in the Day (Jonathan Cape) addresses loss, friendship and lives unmoored. Hilary Mantel says, ‘The lives of two close-knit couples are irrevocably changed by an untimely death in the latest novel from Tessa Hadley, the acclaimed novelist and short story master who ‘recruits admirers with every book’.' Hadley was in conversation with Alex Clark of the Guardian. Hosted...

In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining (Verso), novelist, journalist, essayist and contributing editor to the LRB James Meek anatomises the fractured body of our nation as it approaches one of the most momentous junctures in its post-war history. In a series of frontline reports and interviews from every corner of the island, he talks to remainers, leavers, undecideds and don’t-cares. He was in conver...

Chloe Aridjis’s third novel Sea Monsters (Chatto), set in Mexico in the late 1980s, describes the elopement of Mexico City schoolgirl with a boy she barely knows, in search of freedom, independence and rather more oddly, a troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs who have recently escaped from a Soviet travelling circus. Aridjis was at the shop to read from and talk about her new book, described by Garth Greenw...

Édouard Louis, one of France’s most acclaimed young writers, shot to international fame with his first novel, the semi-autobiographical End of Eddy. His latest book Who Killed My Father (Harvill Secker) revisits many of the same locations and subjects — poverty, homophobia and social exclusion — in non-fictional essay form, and is a powerful polemic exploring the bonds, often persistent even when...

Fiona Benson’s Vertigo & Ghost (Jonathan Cape), the follow-up to her award-winning 2014 debut Bright Travellers, is one of the most hotly-anticipated poetry collections of 2019. Its harrowing central sequence is a retelling of Greek myth, depicting Zeus as a serial rapist; other poems, including the Forward-shortlisted ‘Ruins’, engage with depression, female sexuality and early motherhood. Fiona w...

Things fall apart when empires crumble. Rediscovery of past glories is attempted again and again, until eventually those living in what was once the heart of the empire become reconciled with their fate. Many of the British are not yet reconciled. A major cause of Brexit was a stoked-up fear of immigrants, but Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire (Biteback Publishing) argues that at its he...

First published by Irish independent Tramp Press, Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self became a phenomenal word-of-mouth bestseller. Now picked up on this side of the water by Hamish Hamilton, Pine’s debut collection of autobiographical essays is a poignant, radically honest and fiercely intelligent account of the pains and joys of living as a woman in the 21st Century. She was in conversation with Katheri...

John Lanchester’s new novel, The Wall, is a Kafkaesque nightmare whose richly-imagined world is very different from our own and yet all too familiar. Like 2012’s Capital (recently made into a TV series starring Toby Jones), Lanchester speaks to our contemporary preoccupations with an unnerving exactness. Keith Miller, reviewing Capital, noted that, ‘like Balzac, Lanchester has the brains to relate...

After the disintegration of the most significant relationship of his life, the demons Luke Turner has been battling since childhood are quick to return - depression and guilt surrounding his identity as a bisexual man, experiences of sexual abuse, and the religious upbringing that was the cause of so much confusion. It is among the trees of London's Epping Forest where he seeks refuge. But once a...

Simon Garfield – 'The schoolteacher who made the time fly, a one-man Blue Peter team for intelligent adults, a great British explainer’, according to the Observer – is never less, and usually much more, than entertaining. He was at the shop to talk about his latest book In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World, published by Canongate, and was in conversation with Andy Miller, presenter...

Man Booker International-shortlisted novelist Mathias Enard, 'the most brazenly lapel-grabbing French author since Michel Houellebecq', returns with Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants (tr. Charlotte Mandell), his fourth novel to appear in English after Zone, Street of Thieves and Compass. In 1506, Michelangelo – a young but already renowned sculptor – is invited by the sultan of Constantino...

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

In Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Time Bomb Danny Dorling presents the evidence that in 2018 the growth in UK income inequality may have finally peaked. Inequality began growing in the 1970s and the damaging repercussions may continue long after the peak is passed. There will be speculation and a little futurology. Danny was in conversation with Faiza Shaheen, director of the think tank CLASS...

Does the West’s obsession with Vladimir Putin prevent it from genuinely understanding Russia? In Russia Without Putin (Verso), LRB contributor and Russophile Tony Wood argues that the core features of Putinism—a predatory, authoritarian elite presiding over a vastly unequal society—are integral to the system set in place after the fall of Communism, a legacy of Yeltsinism rather than a resurgence...

‘Like Björk and FKA Twigs, Norwegian artist Jenny Hval presents a version of female sexuality in which carnal impulses, anxieties and the female/male perspective are often knotted together.’ The Guardian As a musician and artist, Jenny Hval is renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery, and in her debut novel, Paradise Rot (Verso) she presents a hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening...

What is it about the particularities of painting that has allowed artists to explore, in a variety of ways and with a sometimes surprising degree of freedom, the vexed relations between the mundane and the celestial? In his latest book Heaven on Earth (Thames and Hudson) art historian T.J. Clark draws on examples from Giotto to Picasso to provide an exciting new history of the depiction of the div...

In Living With Buildings (Profile), Iain Sinclair embarks on a series of expeditions – through London, Marseille, Mexico and the Outer Hebrides. He explores the relationship between sickness and structure, and between art, architecture, social planning and health, taking plenty of detours along the way. Walking is Sinclair's defensive magic against illness and, as he moves, he observes his surroun...

In Democracy Hacked, Martin Moore examines how our own fragile political systems are being gamed by authoritarian states, shadowy hackers and unaccountable social media firms. Is our democracy more vulnerable than we realise? Can these sinister think-fluencers be reined in, and what can we do to restabilise and secure our political sphere? Martin Moore was in conversation with David Runciman, Prof...

Ben Marcus is one of contemporary American fiction’s most masterful writers. His new book of short stories, Notes from the Fog (Granta), is an emotional handbook to the baffling times we live in; a cabinet of brain-rearranging stories which are both horrifyingly strange and deeply touching. From parent/child relationships thrown off kilter to scenarios of dependence and emotional crisis; from left...

Marina Warner’s new collection of essays, Forms of Enchantment (Thames and Hudson), collects her writing on art from 1988 to the present, including pieces on (among others) Louise Bourgeois, Joan Jonas and Paula Rego. She brings to artists and artworks the same anthropological and mythological approach which informs her previous books, including Stranger Magic, From Beast to Blonde and Monuments a...

Richard Powers, one of America’s greatest novelists, often compared to Pynchon and Roth, read from and talked about his twelfth novel ‘The Overstory’ (Heinemann). Powers has always been remarkable for the seriousness with which he takes science and nature and their intersections with literature, and in ‘The Overstory’, which stretches in time and place from antebellum New York to the Pacific North...

In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world - changing it almost beyond recognition. In his new book, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight (Penguin) Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx's prediction tha...