London Review Bookshop Podcast

Adam Shatz, writer and editor on politics and the Middle East, and Jeremy Harding, journalist on colonialism and post‑colonial politics, join novelist Nikita Lalwani. They discuss decolonisation and orientalism. They cover Israel‑Palestine reporting and the risks that follow. They debate editorial culture, diversity in contributors, and how longform discourse survives social media.

Nell Dunn and Tessa Hadley discuss fictional representations of women’s everyday lives with the LRB’s Joanna Biggs, as part of a series of events celebration the LRB's 40th anniversary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Wednesday 16 October, William Davies and Katrina Forrester discussed shared preoccupations including the subjects of their recent books, Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over the World and In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy. This was part of a series of events celebrating the LRB's 40th anniversary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosemary Hill and Iain Sinclair talk to the LRB's digital editor, Sam Kinchin-Smith, about their shared preoccupations with London, as written about in the London Review of Books. This was the first in a series of events celebrating the LRB's 40th anniversary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Against Memoir (And Other Stories), Michelle Tea takes us through the hard times and wild creativity of queer life in America. Via a series of essays, addresses and fragments she reclaims Valerie Solanas as an absurdist, remembers the lives and deaths of the lesbian motorcycle gang HAGS and introduces us to activists at a trans protest camp. Tea was in conversation with writer Juliet Jacques. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denise Riley’s devastating long poem ‘A Part Song’, written in response to the death of her son, was first published in the LRB in 2012 and later became the kernel of her acclaimed collection Say Something Back (Picador). The poem’s prose counterpart Time Lived, Without Its Flow was initially published in a small edition by Capsule Press but has now been made more readily available in a new edition, also from Picador. Riley was in conversation about her essay with the writer Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny and with the poet Emily Berry, author of Dear Boy and Stranger, Baby. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Music critic Ian Penman is back with a pioneering book of essays alluding to a lost moment in musical history ‘when cultures collided and a cross-generational and “cross-colour” awareness was born’. It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (Fitzcarraldo) focuses on black artists, including James Brown, Charlie Parker and Prince, who were at the forefront of innovation and the white artists that followed, adapting their sounds for the mainstream. Described by Iain Sinclair as ‘a laureate for marginal places’ Penman began his career in 1970s at the NME and has since gone on to write for publications such as Sight & Sound, Uncut and the London Review of Books. Penman was in conversation with writer and editor Jennifer Hodgson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nell Zink, born in Virginia in 1964 and now resident in Germany, is one of the most remarkable novelists of her, and indeed any generation. Her exuberant creations, always inflected with political, social and ecological concern, have won worldwide acclaim for their recklessness, their inventiveness and their sheer stylistic brilliance. She read from the latest of them, Doxology (4th Estate), a tale that begins with the iconic tragedy of 11 September 2001 and spins out from it into America’s past and potential futures, she discussed it with Alex Clark of the Guardian. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In twelve inimitable, eccentric, hilarious, disturbing and powerful novels, Nicola Barker has established herself as one of the most inventive and powerful voices in contemporary British fiction. To mark the publication of the thirteenth, I Am Sovereign (William Heinemann), Barker was in conversation about experiment, fiction, contemporaneity and a great deal else besides with the novelist and short story writer Ali Smith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Deborah Levy, an award-winning novelist known for her experimental prose, dives deep into her latest work, The Man Who Saw Everything, with Shahidha Bari, an academic and author. They discuss the novel’s unique premise set against Abbey Road, exploring themes of time, memory, and the implications of surveillance. Levy reflects on writing from a male perspective, the haunting weight of history, and how forgotten details can carry monumental consequences. Their conversation blends personal history with broader socio-political themes, creating a rich tapestry of ideas.