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This month Sam talks to Madeleine Dunnigan about her debut novel Jean. It is set over the long, blazing summer of 1976 at Compton Manor, an isolated boarding school on the south downs. An oubliette, attended by a ragged assortment of boys who have all run out of road elsewhere. Jean is there too, searching desperately for himself among a violent mix of prejudice, antisemitism and predatory intentions. With no reliable actors in his life and cast away in the wilderness of the pre-internet era, he must navigate abandonment and his own irrepressible desire.

Meanwhile Lara speaks to John Grindrod about his fantastic new work of social history, Tales of the Surburbia. Throughout LGBTQ+ history, suburbia has been seen as somewhere to escape from. A place where hetrosexuality rules, where difference will not be tolerated and one where you’ll never find a soulmate. But for many, those streets of twitching curtains and pebble-dashed semis were - or still are - a place to call home. Tales of the Suburbs explores the untold 20th century tale of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people in suburbia. Through remarkable archive material and original interviews.

Jean is published by Daunt Books

Tales of the Suburbs is published by Faber

Music Used on this episode

Small Town Boy - Jose Gonzalez (Sommerville, Bronski, Steinbachek)

There is a Light That Never Goes Out - Cyrus Nabipoor (Marr, Morrissey)

Hand On your Heart - Jose Gonzalez (Stock Aitken Waterman)

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This month Canongate publish Nation of Strangers, the third ‘instalment’ in a series by Turkish novelist, essayist and journalist Ece Temelkuran. Following on from How To Lose A Country and Together it is, once more, rooted in Ece’s forced displacement from her homeland.

Recorded last December at Canongate’s offices Sam met Ece to discuss this deeply personal and unflinching account of being ‘unhomed’. Nation of Strangers is centred on a loss that will resonate deeply with anyone who struggles - in the face of rising global authoritarianism - to recognise the country they call home. Written as a set of letters to a stranger it embraces humility and love as a rejection of the politics of cynicism and asks us once we recognise what is happening, (fascism) what choice do we have but to act?

'Her most ambitious an dazzling book yet.'

BRIAN ENO

'Ece Temelkuran is a brilliant thinker, and her work here is as conceptually illuminating as it is beautifully written .... both a call and a comfort, a book that made me feel so much less alone.'

OMAR EL AKKAD

Meanwhile, Lara meets up with James Meek to hear about his latest novel ‘Your Life Without Me’; a tale of loss, provocation and the radical discomfort of the new. Centred around a single act of destruction (the attempted demolition of St Paul’s Cathedral) it is a book which asks how much of the past we can hold on to if we are to build a future worth living in. And whether change is inherently and unavoidably destructive.

Praise for the novels of James Meek

'A story so original and so fully imagined.'

HILARY MANTEL

'The language is so fresh and crisp and sparkling.'

PHILIP PULLMAN

Music used in this episode:
Norfik - Realization
Ida Urd & Ingrid Høyland- Duvet
Ian Hawgood - I Don’t Think We Belong Here
Norfik - Denial

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ROBOTS AND KINGS

Two wonderful books to start the year. Lara meets up with Rebecca Perry to hear all about her debut novel ‘May We Feed The King’. Already a firm favourite at Field HQ, it is the mesmeric story of a king who resists power and the curator who pursues their forgotten legacy. A huge recommend that is described by A.K. Blakemore as ‘A sort of perfect snow globe, presenting a decadent world in miniature that surprises us with the depth of its reflections on power, yearning and loneliness.’

Get your copy here: https://granta.com/products/may-we-feed-the-king/

Meanwhile Sam speaks to James Muldoon about his latest book ‘Love Machines’, an exploration into the ways in which ‘artificial intelligence is transforming our relationships.’ In equal parts fascinating and terrifying it charts the cynical exploitation of loneliness, the erosion of reality’s fabric and the myriad ways in which we are being radically re-shaped by this technology.

Get Your Copy Here:

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571399277-love-machines/?srsltid=AfmBOopZ7N938xLuydls_QdygGMtTFfy6lSile0TQZudJc1t28vgFUnW

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Published by Granta earlier this autumn, Ben Pester’s debut novel is the story of Tom Crowley - a Willy Loman figure for our age - who is slowly and terrifyingly absorbed into the hallucinatory and labyrinthine surroundings of his work. From the deceptive nature of Luke Bird’s day-glow cover art to the impenetrability of the novel’s work-speak The Expansion Project is deeply unnerving precisely for its recognisable qualities. The alienation, accountability and obsolesce of corporation life at the ever growing 'Capmeadow Business Park,’ a dystopic setting that absorbs memory and demands disassociation.

‘A profoundly moving, extraordinary novel … Witty, touching, layered and entirely original’

Rose Ruane

‘A surrealist nightmare that flows with its own logic, humour, politics and plot energy’

Ross Raisin

‘This is a luminous and startling novel from a unique new voice.’

Samuel Fisher

GET YOUR COPY HERE

https://granta.com/products/the-expansion-project/

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Next February, Canongate will publish Nation of Strangers, the third instalment in a series by Turkish novelist, essayist and journalist Ece Temelkuran. Ahead of its publication we met to discuss the two books that precede it, ‘How To Lose A Country’ and ‘Together - A Manifesto Against A Heartless World.’ Both deal with what Ece has termed ‘cloud fascism’ - the gradual then sudden everywhereness and nowhereness of global autocracy.

Rooted in her own experience of the Erdogan regime’s corruption and unrelenting assault on human rights, both books detail the dark drift toward fascism and the determination and dignity needed in resistance. In this wide ranging conversation, the first of two interviews, we discuss the normalisation of shamelessness, the dangers of pseudo-understanding, the fight for institutions and the essential value of stories, something Ece describes as ‘natural penicillin for diseases of the soul. ‘

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist, political thinker and public speaker whose work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, La Stampa, El Pais, New Statesman and Der Spiegel. Her novels have been published in several languages and adapted for the stage.

‘One of the most acute and perceptive analysts of the furtive growth of fascism. Everyone should know about this.’

PHILIP PULLMAN

‘This is essential.’

MARGARET ATWOOD

‘Temelkuran is a brilliant writer, finding humour, hope and humanity in the darkest corners of our current malaise. Together lifted my heart and my spirits.’

BRIAN ENO

‘A potent mix of fierce urgency but unyielding calmness.’

THE IRISH TIMES

Music used on this episode is Room 2 by 36

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On this episode we meet Clare Carlisle to discuss Transcendence for Beginners, (Fitzcarraldo Editions). A book written through love and mourning, it is, as the title suggests, explorative, unbound and deeply moving.

Ranging widely, from Soren Kierkegaard to George Eliot, The Himalayas to The Isle of Skye, it is a book that offers us devotion and loss as expressions of love. A timely and generative reminder of our own porous and momentary selves and quite simply, a very beautiful book.

‘A work of thrilling lucidity and substance,’

Clare Harman, author of All Sorts of Lives

‘This is the book of a lifetime’s and a book about lifetimes.’

Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

'In an era marked by rampant cruelty and selfishness, Transcendence for Beginners offers its readers various modes of the radiant life.’

Siri Hustvedt, author of Mothers, Fathers and Others

Order your copy here:

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/transcendence-for-beginners/

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Emma Warren has been documenting grassroots culture for decades. Her most recent book, Dance Your Way Home (a Guardian book of the year) was a celebration of 80s club nights, Irish dance halls and sweaty youth centres. This September, she returns with another piece of expertly researched and lovingly told social history.

Once more taking the reader onto familiar ground, Up The Youth Club is a searching look at the rise and fall of a national treasure, highlighting both the seismic impact they've had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence and re-emergence for future generations. So, for anyone who ever forgot their tuck shop money or who came close in a table tennis tournament, here is Emma on a place redolent with collective memory.

‘As a critical and emotive analysis of the Youth Club’s history Warren’s book is seminal. An inspired trip down memory lane …’

Courttia Newland

'Warren shows why youth spaces matter - not just for young people, but for all of us.'

Darren McGarvey

'Community, resilience, kindness . . . A story of people at their best.'

Richard King

Pre-order your copy here:

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571389216-up-the-youth-club/?srsltid=AfmBOoqDMBjdFl4qkX2RbEZyeBIhyDD0wDjaHwCGDx5nMvFGTgDTAgIZ

Music used on this episode: Daniel Avery, Hazel and Gold

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On this episode we hear from playwright Hannah Patterson about her debut novel Ungone. It’s another gem from the mighty Rough Trade Books, the story of a single decision and the strange new world that grows from it.

Hannah’s central character Eve is recently returned from an Antarctic research trip to grapple with the decline of her ageing mother. Unable to visit her at the care home in which she lives, she employs Erin, a total stranger, to go instead, pretending to be her. The act has profound consequences for all three women as the fixed positions of family slip, old ties are loosened and new bonds are formed.

The transience of contemporary life is woven throughout Ungone. The characters navigating a precarious, collapsing world, the unyielding edifices of family seeming ever stranger for it. A curious tension, captured in the prominent prefix of the title that frees the word from its meaning.

“So astute, so shrewd… The theme—can we be someone else?—is beautifully laid out.”—DAVID HARE

“Ungone is as original as it is thrilling and as beautiful as it is haunting. A whip-smart examination of the complexities of end-of-life care and our sense of duty to the ones we love. It is a poignant and fascinating novel, masterfully written.” —HARRY MACQUEEN (writer/director of Supernova)

PREORDER: UNGONE

https://roughtradebooks.com/collections/books/products/ungone-hannah-patterson

UP NEXT: The wonderful Emma Warren with her latest book ‘Up The Youth Club.’ Until then, big love x

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