London Review Bookshop Podcast

Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, described by Le Monde as the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century, was regarded as so dangerous to the Soviet state that Mikhail Suslov declared that it could not be published for at least 200 years. Yekaterina Korotkova-Grossman, Vasily's daughter by his first wife, came to know her father only gradually. At first she saw little of him except during New Year holidays. In the mid-1950s she moved from the Ukraine to Moscow, and they became close in the last ten years of his life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yang Lian's poems collapse distances by combining a deep attention to the particular with the allusiveness of classical Chinese poetry, in which a word or image can contain all of tradition: 'With the cry of a wild goose, I am drawn into the Tang Dynasty at the instant of hearing, making Lee valley's waters flow twelve hundred years upstream.' Yang Lian was in conversation with his translator, Brian Holton, and Iain Sinclair, poet, documentary-novelist and East Londoner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This event took place in association with English PEN, which exists to promote literature and its understanding, uphold writers' freedoms around the world, campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and promote the friendly cooperation of writers and free exchange of ideas. PEN's Writers in Translation programme has, during the past five years, championed over 35 titles by writers from all over the globe, and supports the three speakers here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can the same thing be said in a different language, when the language carries the assumptions of a whole culture with it? How do you balance spirit and accuracy? What do you do with slang and puns and untranslatable words? However many questions we ask about translation in the abstract, we rarely see how it actually works. This event was about giving time and attention to that process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An important champion of francophone literature, Mabanckou is both a writer engage, and a very engaging man. Teaching at the time in the French literature department at UCLA, he made a rare visit to London for the festival. Mabanckou talked about his work with Helen Stevenson, translator of Broken Glass and author of several books, including Instructions for Visitors: Life and Love in a French Town. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Edward Said described Elias Khoury as an artist who gives 'voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages'. Khoury was in discussion with the writer and journalist Jeremy Harding, a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, who has written extensively on Khoury's life and work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Bell and Peter Campbell talked about things that painters can and can't do, in particular about the relationship painters have had to old art and the limits and opportunities that arise from society, its technology and its institutions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In conversation with the novelist Tom McCarthy, Jonathan Lethem read from Chronic City and discussed, inter alia, Manhattan's virtuality, the inspiration behind the character of Perkus Tooth, the price of things, and talking animals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With his new play about Auden and Britten, The Habit of Art, playing to packed houses at the National Theatre, Alan Bennett visited the Bookshop to read from his introduction to the play and to answer an eclectic range of questions from the audience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

LRB editor Mary-Kay Wilmers, and contributors Jeremy Harding and John Lanchester, discussed the pleasures and pitfalls of writing family histories, under the chairmanship of LRB publisher Nicholas Spice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.