This week, Cassie McCullagh and Jonathan Green take a look at Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket - a cryptic plunge into paranoia and power, where nothing is quite what it seems. Plus, Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book, a shimmering meditation on the cinema scene in 1970s Italy, and Jeanette Winterson’s One Aladdin Two Lamps, which re-imagines duality and the stories we tell ourselves.

BOOKS

• Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape) 
• The Silver Book by Olivia Laing (Hamish Hamilton) 
• One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson (Penguin Random House)

GUESTS

• Huw Griffiths — Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School in English and Writing at the University of Sydney
• Claire Mabey — Founder of New Zealand’s literary festival Verb Wellington, books editor at The Spinoff, and author of the award-winning middle-grade novel The Raven's Eye Runaways. Its sequel, The Raven’s Eye Rebellion, is due in April next year.

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Naomi Arnold, Northbound
• Nadine Huder, Slowing the Sun
• Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
• Seán Hewitt, Open Heaven
• Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials trilogy - The Rose Field
• Ruby Tandoh, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

CREDITS

• Presenter, Cassie McCullagh and Jonathan Green
• Producer, Cassie McCullagh and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Beth Stewart
• Arts editor, Rhiannon Brown