An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-david-szalay

This week Adam Biles sits down with Booker Prize–winner David Szalay to discuss his novel Flesh — a work that begins in post-Soviet Hungary and expands into a stark portrait of Europe over the last three decades.

Szalay describes writing a book that takes almost nothing for granted, grounding experience in the physical body rather than psychology. They explore the novel’s emotionally charged yet morally unresolved relationships, its refusal of overt judgment, and its spare, withholding prose style.

The conversation covers masculinity, violence, agency, and the seductive fantasy of “the West,” asking whether István is passive — or simply shaped by forces larger than himself. What happens when a novel resists explanation? When language reaches its limits? And how can restraint intensify emotional impact rather than diminish it?

Buy Flesh: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/flesh-2

*

Winner of the Booker Prize 2025 for Flesh. David Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London and now lives in Vienna. He is the author of six works of fiction that have been translated into over 20 languages, as well as several BBC radio dramas. His debut novel, London and the South-East, won Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes. All That Man Is was awarded the Gordon Burn Prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016.

He was selected for the 2013 edition of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2010 appeared in the Telegraph’s list of the top 20 British writers under 40. In November 2025, Flesh won the Booker Prize.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live in the bookshop, this conversation dives into the inventive world of Perspectives, Laurent Binet’s historical novel that transforms Renaissance Florence into the scene of a gripping whodunnit. The discussion explores how a real painter’s death becomes the catalyst for a dazzling literary experiment: a murder investigation told entirely through letters, gossip, and competing testimonies.

The author reveals how the book blends meticulous archival research with narrative play—treating history not as a fixed record but as a puzzle assembled from partial truths. From the politics of ducal courts to the working lives of artists and artisans, the episode uncovers a city in creative and ideological upheaval, grappling with what comes after artistic perfection.

At once detective story, art-history meditation, and sly reflection on storytelling itself, this is a lively exploration of how the past can feel startlingly contemporary—and how every account depends on who’s holding the pen.

Buy Perspectives: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/perspectives-4

*

Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes. The 7th Function of Language won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallié. Civilisations is a bestseller that has won the Grand Prix de l'Académie française.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

George Saunders returns to the Shakespeare and Company Podcast to talk with host Adam Biles about Vigil, his long-awaited new novel. Set on the threshold between life and death, Vigil follows a dying oil executive and the ghost tasked with comforting him, unfolding as a darkly comic, morally urgent meditation on guilt, responsibility, and free will in the age of climate collapse.

Saunders discusses his fascination with liminal spaces and afterlives, the technical challenges of writing beyond realism, and how revision allows fiction to think more deeply than polemic ever could. Drawing on his own past in the oil industry, he reflects on writing characters implicated in environmental harm with both empathy and moral seriousness. The conversation ranges across Dickens, Tolstoy, Buddhism, and the novel’s central question: whether redemption is possible when action is no longer an option. As ever, Saunders brings humor, generosity, and intellectual daring to a discussion that embraces complexity rather than easy answers.

*

George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize in 2017, and five collections of stories including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recent collection Liberation Day (selected by former President Obama has one of his ten favourite books of 2021). Three of Saunders’ books –Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln in the Bardo – were chosen for the New York Times’ list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Saunders hosts the popular Story Club on Substack, which grew out of his book on the Russian short story, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.