London Review Bookshop Podcast

In Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel The Blazing World (Sceptre) artist Harriet Burden, consumed by fury at the lack of recognition she has received from the New York art establishment, embarks on an experiment: she hides her identity behind three male fronts who exhibit her work as their own, to universal acclaim. ‘All intellectual endeavours’ Burden herself remarks pugnaciously at the novel’s opening ‘fare better in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work … it can locate a cock and a pair of balls.’ Siri Hustvedt was joined in conversation by the art critic Sarah Thornton, author of Seven Days in the Art World. The pair discussed the book's themes of art, gender bias and subterfuge, lighting upon neuroscience, the nature of celebrity and wine-tasting along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Berger came to the Bookshop to celebrate the life and work of Aimé Césaire on the occasion of Archipelago's reissue of Césaire's long poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1936). Born in Martinique in 1913, Césaire was one of the founding voices of the négritude movement in Francophone literature. He considered this work his “break into the forbidden,” at once a cry of rebellion and a celebration of black identity. The English translation by John Berger and Anya Bostock retains the visceral, lyric energy of the French original. John Berger opened the evening with a reading from Return to My Native Land, and was then joined in conversation by the poet and translator David Constantine. The pair discussed Césaire's work, exploring what it means to write in one's mother tongue and the nature of hope. Berger concluded the evening with a reading of Peter Blackman's 'Stalingrad'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Javier Cercas rose to fame in the English-speaking world with The Soldiers of Salamis which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2004 and was one of our early bestsellers. He continued his exploration of modern Spanish history with The Anatomy of a Moment, a work of non-fiction that investigated the failed coup of 1981. Now he returns to fiction with Outlaws, a fast-paced and morally complex tale of disaffected youth set in the period just after the end of the Franco dictatorship. Javier was joined in conversation by Paul Preston, Príncipe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the LSE and author of The Spanish Holocaust. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Quoting from the letters, diaries, reviews, and essays of novelists and drawing on their biographies, Schmidt’s The Novel – A Biography (Harvard) invites us into the creative dialogues between authors and between books, and suggests how these dialogues have shaped the development of the novel in English. Michael Schmidt spoke with Michael Wood, author and regular contributor to the London Review of Books, in a conversation chaired by novelist Kirsty Gunn. The discussion covered the 13-year process of writing the book, the social function of the novel, an appalling misprint involving Martin Amis and favourite reads old and new. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

'The tutored and passionate eye of the director holds the space, which otherwise would be without boundary, indiscriminate and endless.' Since making her first film at the age of 14, Sally Potter has established herself as one of Britain's leading directors – of dance and theatre as well as of cinema. In her new book, Naked Cinema (Faber),she strips bare the art of directing actors for the camera. Potter has always been noted for her extraordinary rapport with performers, and for her ability to coax extraordinary performances out of them. Here she leads the reader through the film-making process, from casting to screening, always placing the actor at the heart of her account. Concrete examples are provided by a series of revealing interviews with actors she has worked with, including Julie Christie, with whom she worked on her first feature film The Gold Diggers, Annette Bening (Ginger and Rosa) and Jude Law who dragged up for her in Rage. Sally spoke about her book and her career with Gareth Evans, The Whitechapel Gallery's curator of film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following the hugely enjoyable launch event last year for [*The Flamethrowers*][1], Rachel Kushner returned to the shop to mark the UK publication (by Vintage) of her first novel [*Telex From Cuba*][2], set among the American expatriate community on the eve of Castro's revolution. Rachel was in conversation with Robert Collins, Deputy Editor of the *Sunday Times* and an early champion of *The Flamethrowers*. The pair explored the history of United Fruit Yellow, how best to throw a hand grenade, and the mysterious character of Rachel K... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his new book, 'Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism' (Profile), David Harvey unravels the paradoxes at the heart of capitalism – its drive, for example, to accumulate capital beyond the means of investing it; its imperative to use labour-saving technologies that leave consumers bereft of adequate means of consumption; and its compulsion to exploit nature to the point of extinction. Such are the tensions that underpin the persistence of mass unemployment, the downward spirals of Europe and Japan, and China’s and India’s unstable lurches in uncertain directions. Not that these contradictions are all destructive in the short term: they produce the crises through which capitalism has historically reconstituted itself in new guises. But can capitalism survive in the long run by staggering from crisis to crisis? David was in conversation with Owen Jones, author of 'Chavs' (Verso). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the publication of The Bloomsbury Cookbook (Thames & Hudson), we held an exclusive evening at the Bookshop, a stone’s throw away from the kitchens and dining rooms where the Bloomsbury group would converge. Author Jans Ondaatje Rolls was in conversation with artist Cressida Bell on the world of the Bloomsbury group. The talk was accompanied by a menu of recipes and cocktails inspired by the book, courtesy of Terry Glover of the London Review Cake Shop; the evening opened with a cocktail devised by Vanessa Bell, followed by salmon mayonnaise, a good deal of truffle cream and the potent Green Dragon Quaglino.... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2010 Nick Hunt set out on an epic walk in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor, across the whole European continent ‘from the Hook of Holland to the Golden Horn.’ Relying, like his hero, on the hospitality of strangers and using Patrick Leigh Fermor’s writings as his only guide, Hunt crossed Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, partly to see how much had changed, and how much hadn’t, but mainly in order to have a ‘good old-fashioned adventure.’ His account of his journey Walking the Woods and the Water is published by Nicholas Brealey. Nick Hunt was in conversation with Patrick Leigh Fermor’s friend and biographer Artemis Cooper, who in 2013 worked with Colin Thubron to complete Paddy’s final work The Broken Road. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

May-Lan Tan and Will Eaves joined us at the Bookshop for the launch of their respective books, Things to Make and Break (since shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award) and The Absent Therapist (since shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize), both published by CB Editions. The authors treated us to a selection of passages from their work, featuring night-schools, spanking clubs and ex-girlfriends. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.