Episodios

  • Summer books 2025

    Summer books 2025
    Jun 9 2025
    Books we think you might enjoy on a plane, by the pool or in the park. Andy, Nicky and our old friend Una McCormack discuss the following fantastic beach reads - Birch reads? - and a novel from Backlisted's own backlist: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Sceptre); The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, trans. Adriana Hunter (Penguin); Poetry in the Making by Ted Hughes (Faber); and The Lowlife by Alexander Baron (Faber). This is Backlisted's 10th anniversary year, so over the summer, we'll be revisiting a few old favourites or titles by much-loved authors that somehow slipped through the cracks. We last discussed The Lowlife on Episode 64 back in 2018, but it has just been republished and is back in bookshops now. PS. Andy would like it to be known that books can also be enjoyed indoors. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 11 m
  • The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

    The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend
    May 26 2025
    The wonderful Nina Stibbe, award-winning novelist and diarist, joins us for a discussion of Sue Townsend's classic comic creation. When it was first published in 1982, the confidential journal of Leicester's foremost teenage poet and intellectual was an overnight success, eventually going on to become the best-selling British novel of the 1980s. Four decades on, we can see it for what it truly is: a masterclass in the art of writing comic prose and a work of political satire that stealthily made its way into several million British homes. Nina, Andy, John and Nicky celebrate Sue Townsend's life and career, laugh at her jokes, and make the case for her to rank alongside Charles Dickens, Stella Gibbons, George Grossmith and E.M. Delafield in the pantheon of British writers. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 16 m
  • The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

    The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir
    May 12 2025
    To discuss The Image of Her (1966) by Simone de Beauvoir we are joined by writer and translator Lauren Elkin, whose previous books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, Scaffolding and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir was also a prolific novelist. In The Image of Her—newly translated by Elkin after more than forty years— reads like a dispatch from the smooth surface of a life coming quietly undone. Laurence is a successful advertising executive with a picture-perfect Parisian existence—handsome husband, lover, chic flat, weekends in the country—but when her daughter starts asking difficult questions about injustice, that surface begins to crack.We trace the novel’s shifting reception—from period piece to prescient critique—and consider Beauvoir’s voice as a novelist: ironic, exacting, and unexpectedly funny. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 12 m
  • Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

    Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en
    Apr 28 2025
    Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time, joins John and Andy for a tour of Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the sixteenth-century fable widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, newly translated by Julia Lovell. The Monkey King's powers include shape-shifting, immortality and "being incredibly rude"; listeners of a certain age will be familiar with his legendary exploits - and those of his travelling companions Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - from the 1980s cult TV series Monkey, a staple of BBC2's week-night schedule. The book itself is a hugely entertaining combination of action caper, farce and religious allegory, analogous in some ways to The Pilgrim's Progress but with a lot more jokes and fighting. We throughly enjoyed chatting with Kaliane about Monkey King, her own writing and also her day job as an editor at Penguin Classics and we think you will feel the Monkey Magic too. All together now: "the spirit of Monkey was irrepressible!" * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 7 m
  • The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

    The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
    Apr 7 2025
    “A masterpiece I don’t fully understand—and don’t need to.” This week’s book is The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, a bold, baffling, and darkly funny novel that has confounded and enchanted readers since its publication in 1995. Joining us to explore it is Chris Chibnall, award-winning screenwriter, playwright, and now novelist, best known for Broadchurch and Doctor Who, and author of the new detective novel Death at the White Hart. Written in the wake of Ishiguro’s Booker-winning The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled follows Ryder, a famous pianist, through an unnamed European city where nothing is quite as it seems. We talk about Ishiguro’s decision to “go electric” with this daring experiment in narrative structure and tone; how the novel grew from critical confusion to cult classic; and why its unresolved tensions and emotional obliqueness are part of its power. For anyone who’s ever had to perform while still in their dressing gown, this one’s for you. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 12 m
  • What Remains by Hannah Arendt

    What Remains by Hannah Arendt
    Mar 25 2025
    Elif Shafak and Lyndsey Stonebridge join John and Andy for a discussion of the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher whose books include The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianismand Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This being Backlisted, we approach Arendt's formidable oeuvre and truly extraordinary biography via an intriguing route: her poetry. The book Elif and Lyndsey have chosen for this special episode is What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Norton), published in November 2024. Arendt wrote poetry from a young age; she kept the manuscript of many of these poems with her as a refugee from Nazi Germany, in the camps and on the boat to America. What did they represent to their author? And as the world finds itself once again grappling with the threats of populism and totalitarianism, what can we learn from Hannah Arendt? We hope you will enjoy this fascinating, thought-provoking conversation as much as we did. Elif Shafak's new novel There Are Rivers In The Sky (Penguin) is available now. Lyndsey Stonebridge's We Are Free To Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience (Vintage) was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2024. *For £100 off any Serious Readers HD Light and free UK delivery use the discount code: BACK at seriousreaders.com/backlisted * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus fortnightly episodes and original writing, become a patron at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 16 m
  • A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford

    A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford
    Mar 11 2025
    Sybille Bedford's A Compass Error (1968) is a classic coming-of-age novel, a love story, a family saga and a study in psychological suspense rolled into one. Joining us to discuss it are the novelist Francesca Reece and Krista Cowman, Professor of History at the University of Leicester. The late Hilary Mantel described A Compass Error, Bedford's third novel, as 'a powerful and merciless book ... which visits on its heroine a series of humiliations that cut to the quick'. We explore the book in the context of Bedford's remarkable life and body of autobiographical work, which encompassed fiction, travel writing, reportage and memoir. Where does her "Riviera lesbian thriller" - copyright, Francesca Reece - fit into it all? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 15 m
  • A Life by Elia Kazan

    A Life by Elia Kazan
    Feb 25 2025
    We explore Elia Kazan's memoir A Life (1988) with veteran biographer and critic John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, amongst others. Kazan enjoyed a dazzling career in both theatre and film, directing the original stage productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, before making a series of cinematic masterpieces: On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Wild River. He discovered both Marlon Brando and James Dean. But his decision to testify in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee compromised and complicated his artistic legacy. In A Life, Kazan comes out swinging; his personality is stamped on every page of this fascinating, pugnacious and still-controversial book, echoing the defiant words of Terry Molloy at the climax of On The Waterfront: "I'm glad what I done". * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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    1 h y 15 m
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