LARB Radio Hour

Italian author Francesco Pacifico talks with hosts Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher about his latest novel, The Women I Love, which follows an editor and poet named Marcello who is trying to write a novel about the women in his life. The relationships he explores are sexual and romantic - there’s a young editor Elenora, with whom he is having an affair; Barbara, his girlfriend and later his wife - as well platonic and familiar, he writes about his sister Irene as well as his mother. The book is about love and sex, as well as gender, power, and literature. How well can we know each other, even our most intimate partners? Also Neel Patel, author of Tell Me How To Be, returns to recommend Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala.

Eric and Kate are joined by Tochi Onyebuchi to discuss his debut adult science fiction novel Goliath. Told through a series of vignettes, Goliath meditates on a world destroyed by environmental and viral catastrophe, in which the privileged largely white population has decamped for a space colony.  The group left on earth, predominantly people of color, try to eke out an existence amid the ruins.  Delving into such topics as colonization, gentrification, and the racial conflict that courses through American history and which, in the novel, firmly shapes its future and the future of the world in the 2050s, Goliath is a haunting and incisive look at a world that could very much be our own.

Also, Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends, returns to recommend his favorite book of 2021, Luster by Raven Leilani.

Boris Dralyuk, LARB’s Editor-in-Chief, joins Medaya Ocher for a very special ex-Soviet edition of the LARB Book Club and Radio Hour. The guest of honor is the doyen of Russian-American letters, Gary Shteyngart. The author of the novels The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, Super Sad True Love Story, and Lake Success, as well as of the memoir Little Failure, Shteyngart’s sharp sense of humor, memorable characters, and up-to-the-minute responsiveness to developments in the culture have won him comparisons to Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, as well as a number of prizes and a wide, dedicated readership. His latest novel, Our Country Friends, is a poignant, affectionate tale of pandemic life set at a “House on the Hill” in the Hudson Valley. More than one critic has called it Chekhovian, and Chekhov does make a well-timed appearance, but this eventful novel is no pastiche. During the talk, Shetyngart touches on the lessons of Soviet and Russian life, the pernicious effects of social media, the importance of community, and the ways in which fiction can and should address the unfolding crises of modern life. Also, James Hannaham, author of Pilot Impostor, returns to recommend Megan Mylan’s 2021 documentary about Syrian refugees, Simple as Water.

Author, activist, and novelist Arundhati Roy joins us from Delhi to discuss her new collection of essays, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. Roy is well known for her impassioned political writing, as well as her two novels, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and The God of Small Things, which won the Man Booker in 1997. She talks with us about the rise of Indian nationalism, Modi’s descent into fascism, the oppression of Muslims in India, and the role of fiction and literature in the world today. Also, Yaa Gyasi, author of Transcendent Kingdom, returns to recommend Saidiya Hartman's groundbreaking Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals.

It’s that time of year again — the end. In our annual “best of” show, Kate, Daya, and Eric select their favorite books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, scandals, and other items from the past 12 months. Sit back, enjoy, and have a very Happy New Year!

Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher talk with Anna Della Subin about her new book, Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine. Accidental Gods traces the rarely told history of the deification of living men in modern times, revealing the phenomenon’s connection to imperial conquest, revolution, and civil war. Taking as a starting point Columbus’ exploitation of his reception by native peoples as a deity come from the heavens, the book offers in-depth studies of figures such as the Ethiopian King Haile Selassie, who is regarded as God by Rastafarians in Jamaica, England’s Prince Philip, who became the center of a religion on an island in the South Pacific, and Jiddu Krishnamurti, who was seen as divine by early Theosophists. What does it mean to make a man a God? Why is it always a man? And what does that say about notions of masculinity, the place of religion in society, and the relations between political power and divinity?

Also, Sam Quinones, author of The Least of Us, returns to recommend Calvin Trillin’s Killings.

Award-winning author and investigative journalist Sam Quinones joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to discuss his latest book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth. The book charts the sweeping, shocking rise of synthetic drugs in the United States, and their production here, by corporations such as Purdue Pharma, as well as in labs in Mexico and China. The proliferation of so-called “designer drugs” has led to yet another wave of the opiate crisis, with more overdose deaths between the spring of 2020 and 2021 than ever before recorded. The Least of Us tells the personal stories behind many of these casualties, the larger political and socioeconomic shifts that have exacerbated the problem, the fascinating and disturbing history of the emergence of fentanyl and methamphetamine, and what some communities are doing to fight against the drugs’ devastation.

Also, Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine, drops by to recommend Jason Josephson Storm’s The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences.

Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf moderate a panel on the use, abuse, and omnipresence of digital technology in our lives — with writers and scholars Christoph Bieber (University of Duisburg-Essen), Safiya Noble (Algorithms of Oppression), and Anna Wiener (The New Yorker, Uncanny Valley).

A global pandemic, a national election, entire regions devastated by one natural disaster after another: new technologies have made it possible for us to track, grasp, and witness these large-scale phenomena in real time and in the palms of our hands. Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter have encouraged a sense of community and mobilized action, even as they have facilitated the spread of misinformation and the formation of fissures in public life. How do we, as individuals and as communities, navigate technologies of information and misinformation? How much power do tech companies have in shaping public conversation, and how much power should they have?

This event was called Online Together and it was a part of LARB’s Semipublic Intellectual Sessions, a tenth anniversary celebration and fundraiser.

Donate to LARB between now and Dec. 31 and your support of vibrant and vital conversations will be matched by an anonymous donor! lareviewofbooks.org/donate/

Writer and artist James Hannaham joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to discuss his most recent book, Pilot Impostor, a mix of prose, poetry, and visual collage. James is the author of the award-winning novels Delicious Foods and God Says No. His short stories have appeared in One Story, Fence, and Bomb, and he was for many years a writer for the Village Voice and Salon. 

Pilot Impostor was partly inspired by a trip to Cape Verde and Lisbon, right after Trump’s election in 2016. The book brings together disparate influences like the work of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, the TV show Air Disasters, and current events. Through shifts in form, narrative, and style, Hannaham asks some of the biggest questions about the self, identity, the failure of leadership, history, and the nature of consciousness.

Also, film critic Melissa Anderson, author of Inland Empire, returns to recommend Jean Stein’s depiction of Hollywood, West of Eden.