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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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