I’m joined this week by writer and journalist Ilya Gridneff, whose career has taken him from Sydney to South Sudan and now to the Financial Times bureau in Canada. We talk about his first work of fiction, Your Name Here, co-authored with the brilliant Helen DeWitt — a wild, experimental novel with a long, unusual history. We also dive into the ideas and books that shaped him. If you enjoy the episode, please leave a review and follow @litwithcharles.

Ilya Gridneff’s four books were:

• 2666, by Roberto Bolaño (2004)
• A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
• Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1938)
• Post Office, by Charles Bukowski (1971)