London Review Bookshop Podcast

• Xiaolu Guo & Philip Hoare: Call Me Ishmaelle

  Gender, race and identity collide on the open seas in Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle (Chatto), a powerful, feminist reimagining of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. She was in conversation with Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan: Or the Whale, who has described Guo’s latest novel as being ‘as animal and visceral and shape-shifting and subversive as the broad back of the mythic whale themselves.’

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• Didier Eribon & Mendez: The Life, Old Age & Death of a Working-Class Woman

  In The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman (Allen Lane), sociologist Didier Eribon continues the historical, political and personal reflection he began with his classic memoir Returning to Reims, this time turning his attention to the end of life. Tracing his mother’s rapid physical and cognitive decline, and drawing on works by Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Annie Ernaux and Michel Foucault among others, Eribon transmutes his rage, sadness and the shame over her death into a nuanced portrait of the woman who raised him. How does our society treat the elderly, Eribon asks? Can the completely dependent speak for themselves – and if not, who can speak for them? Eribon was in conversation about his work with the essayist and novelist Mendez. From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]

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• Jennifer Hodgson & Lara Pawson on Samuel Beckett

  Seventy years after the publication of Samuel Beckett’s first novel in English, Faber have reissued Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable with ritzy new covers and fresh introductions. To celebrate, Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light, and Jennifer Hodgson, whose biography of Ann Quin is forthcoming, deliver their own tribute to Beckett's fiction, and discuss his life and work. ‘Oh the stories I could tell you if I were easy,’ as Beckett wrote, ‘What a rabble in my head, what a gallery of moribunds.’

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• Sophie Lewis & Lola Olufemi: Enemy Feminisms

  In Enemy Feminisms (Haymarket Books), described by Judith Butler as ‘honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant’, Sophie Lewis provides a field guide to the reactionary stereotypes that have affected and distorted feminisms past and present, and propounds a paradigm for a feminism that is inclusive, anticolonial and truly liberational. Lewis, author of Full Surrogacy Now and Abolish the Family, was joined in conversation about her work by Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism, Interrupted and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠⁠ From the LRB: Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod⁠ Get in touch: [email protected]

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• Jacqueline Rose & Yasmin El-Rifae: Women in Dark Times

  Women in Dark Times (Fitzcarraldo) begins with three remarkable women: revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg; German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon; and film icon Marilyn Monroe. The story of these women blazes a trail across some of the defining features of the twentieth century – revolution, totalitarianism and the American dream – and compels us to reckon with the unspeakable. Extending her argument into the present, Rose turns her focus to ‘honour’ killings and celebrates contemporary artists whose work grows out of an unflinching engagement with all that is darkest in the modern world. Women in Dark Times, reissued a decade after its original publication, offers a template for a scandalous feminism, one which confronts all that is most recalcitrant and unsettling in the struggle to create a better world. Jacqueline Rose was in conversation about her work with Yasmin El-Rifae, co-producer of The Palestine Festival of Literature and author of Radius.

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