Lit with Charles

Marguerite Duras and Philip K. Dick make for an unlikely pairing this week, as Charles and Liv compare notes on The Lover and A Scanner Darkly. Then, things get stranger with a trip through the extraordinary life of Victor Hugo – a man whose habits involved live bats, raw lobsters and some deeply questionable party tricks.

Finally: when is it okay to give up on a book? Charles and Liv disagree on the virtues of persevering, the dreaded reading slog, and whether life is simply too short for bad books.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

This week, Charles and Liv discuss Gisèle Pelicot’s harrowing memoir A Hymn to Life and Alan Bennett’s brilliantly subtle Talking Heads.

They also delve into Serge Doubrovsky’s The Broken Book and the strange, tragic consequences of turning your own life into fiction. Plus, they answer a listener question: do bestseller lists actually tell us anything useful? From publishing-industry marketing to what our reading habits reveal about society, Charles and Liv consider what — if anything — we can learn from the books that sell.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

This week, Charles and Liv discuss Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Kamel Daoud’s controversial novel Houris, exploring the Algerian Civil War and the strange story surrounding the book.

They also uncover the time Hunter S. Thompson terrified Jack Nicholson with an elk heart, before answering a listener question: how do you decide what to read next? From obsessive reading spreadsheets to simply trusting the universe, Charles and Liv reveal their very different – or perhaps surprisingly similar – systems.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

This week, Charles and Liv discuss Ian Fleming’s For Your Eyes Only, Clarice Lispector’s strange and brilliant The Hour of the Star, and why some books are better read like poetry.
They also uncover John Steinbeck’s unpublished werewolf novel and debate whether authors’ work should ever be published against their wishes. Plus, they answer a listener question: what would you change about contemporary book culture? From endless “best books” lists to the pressure to read 100 books a year, Charles and Liv have a few complaints.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

Welcome to a new season of Lit With Charles, and a new format, as Charles is joined by co-host Liv for a weekly conversation about books, reading and the literary world.

This week, they discuss Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, Javier Marías’s Tomás Nevinson, and the surprising history of the CIA using literature as Cold War propaganda, including Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Plus, they answer a listener question: how do you encourage someone to read more? From putting down your phone to simply choosing books you actually enjoy, Charles and Liv share their best advice.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

This week, Charles is joined by acclaimed novelist Santanu Bhattacharya. Santanu is one of the most exciting emerging voices in contemporary British fiction. Raised in India and now based in London, with eight cities across three countries in between, he is the author of the acclaimed novels One Small Voice and Deviants (2025). His writing explores identity, belonging, family, masculinity, and queer experience with remarkable warmth, intelligence, and emotional depth.

Together, they explore queer literature and LGBTQ+ life in India, the impact of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and the relationship between politics, identity and fiction. Santanu also shares his journey to becoming a novelist, the books and writers who shaped him, and what Pride means to him today.

A fascinating conversation about writing, queer history, Indian literature and the stories that help us understand a changing world.

Today, Charles speaks with one of Britain’s most esteemed authors, the novelist and poet Sir Ben Okri.

Sir Ben first shot to international fame in 1991 with The Famished Road, which won the Booker Prize that same year, making him the youngest-ever winner at the time, at just 32. Since then, he has published more than twenty books spanning novels, poetry, short stories, essays and plays, including Songs of Enchantment, Astonishing the Gods, Dangerous Love, The Age of Magic and The Freedom Artist. In 2023, he was knighted for services to literature.

In this episode, Charles speaks with Sir Ben about his life and remarkable literary career, as well as his newest novel, Waking the Warriors. The book follows three unlikely heroes – Mel, Rosa and Apibus – as they set out to find a witch who can wake a group of sleeping warriors and save their city from a foreign invasion.

Waking the Warriors is out now, available online and from bookstores.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

It was such a pleasure today to be joined by Olivia Kate Menzies - aka Liv - for this Season 3 finale, as we looked back on what has been a rich and varied run of conversations on Lit With Charles. Liv has played a key role behind the scenes this year – researching, preparing, and occasionally conducting interviews – so it felt only right to bring her in for a proper recap.

In this episode, we revisit some of our standout moments: the interviews that stayed with us, the books by our guests that we most admired, and the recommendations that have gone right to the top of our TBR lists. We also touch on broader themes that emerged across the season, from the psychology of certain literary tropes to the changing nature of reading and travel today.

We’ll be taking a little break before Season 4, where we’re going to be trying out a more conversational format, alongside a couple of very special interviews. So, you can expect more of Liv in the upcoming series!

It was a pleasure to reflect on the season together, and I hope you enjoyed listening.

It was such a pleasure today to speak with the novelist Andrew Miller, one of Britain’s most accomplished contemporary writers, whose career now spans more than three decades and ten novels. Andrew joined me from South Somerset in the west of England to discuss his latest book, The Land in Winter, recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Set during the brutal winter of 1962–63, the novel explores the emotional tensions within two marriages as a great freeze isolates a small community and forces its characters to confront truths about their relationships and themselves. It is also fair to say that I was fascinated by our discussion, which explored Andrew’s upbringing in the West Country, the moment at eighteen when he decided to become a writer, and the importance of landscape and weather in shaping fiction. We also discussed the four books that have helped shape his literary imagination, from James Salter’s beautifully written portrait of a marriage in Light Years to Tarjei Vesaas’s haunting Norwegian novel The Ice Palace. It was wonderful to have this conversation with Andrew, and I hope you enjoy listening to our chat.

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!

This week on Lit With Charles, Liv — who has worked on the podcast for quite a while now — steps in to interview novelist and dramaturg Sarvat Hasin, author of the new novel Strange Girls. Sarvat is a British-Pakistani writer based in London. She studied Politics at Royal Holloway before completing a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Prior to Strange Girls, she published This Wide Night (longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature), You Can’t Go Home Again, and The Giant Dark, which won the inaugural Mo Siewcharran Prize.

Strange Girls follows two friends, Ava and Aliya, who meet at university and form an intense friendship built around books, ambition, and a shared sense of being outsiders. Years later, after growing apart, they reunite in London for a friend’s hen weekend — where old tensions, buried resentments, and unresolved feelings begin to surface.

In their conversation, Liv and Sarvat talk about obsession and intimacy in female friendships, the politics of who gets to tell a shared story, and what happens when the person who once knew you best becomes someone you can no longer quite face. It was a brilliant conversation — I hope you enjoy listening.

Sarvat’s four books were:

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (1992)

Angels in America, by Tony Kushner (1991)

Hera Lindsay Bird, by Hera Lindsay Bird (2016)

Mr Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi (2011)

Lit with Charles loves reviews. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review of your own, and follow me on Instagram at @litwithcharles. Let’s get more people listening – and reading!