From Adam and Eve to Hester Prynne to Cersie Lannister, characters in literature have been motivated by and undone by shame, so this month we decided to get up close and personal with this uncomfortable emotion. We spoke to author Pajtim Statovci about his brilliant first novel, My Cat Yugoslavia, which was originally published in Finnish in 2014. It tells the story of a young gay refugee from the Balkans, whose search for meaning in the midst of loneliness leads him to purchase a boa constrictor, in spite of his acute fear of snakes, and to befriend a talking cat he meets in a Helsinki gay bar.

After Brexit - the supposed ‘will of the people’ - everyone is talking about the working class. And yet the actual voice of the working class is rarely heard, especially in literature. This month, we have a very special edition of Literary Friction based around a new collection of essays on the working class by the working class called Know Your Place, published by the brilliant gang at Dead Ink Books. We talked to three authors featured in the collection about their essays and the urgent need to publish more diverse voices: award-winning novelist Kit de Waal; the editor and publisher of Know Your Place, Nathan Connolly; and London-based writer and poet Abondance Matanda.

It's September, the leaves are turning and Autumn has arrived, so in honour of this return to reality we bring you a show about the everyday, the mundane, the quotidian in literature. As usual, our theme is inspired by our guest, and this month we’ll be playing a recording of a live interview Carrie did with the celebrated Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard a couple weeks ago at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road. Knausgaard is best known for his epic My Struggle series, but he was in town to talk about his new book, appropriately called Autumn, the first in a quartet of titles based around the seasons. In Autumn, he describes the world around him – from chewing gum to toilet bowls to frogs – to his unborn daughter. So tune in for a celebration of the ordinary things in literature, and a discussion about how writers from George Eliot to Elizabeth Strout have made them compelling and extraordinary.

Ever since the Lumière brothers showed their 1895 film of a train pulling into a station, we have been captivated by the silver screen, and this month’s show is an ode to what happens when cinema and literature cross paths. We interviewed award-winning American novelist Dana Spiotta about her latest book, Innocents and Others, which tells the story of two friends who are both filmmakers, and the stress their relationship suffers when an enigmatic woman named Jelly comes into their lives. As usual, we’ll also discuss the theme more generally, talking about books that engage with cinema, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon to the criticism of Pauline Kael and Gilles Deleuze. So, sit back, relax, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the show!

This month we're discussing a subject that isn't covered enough: race in Britain. Our brilliant author/guest is Reni Eddo-Lodge, who came in to talk about her first book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, a vital and passionate look at this country's long and complicated relationship with structural racism. We're also thrilled to be joined in the conversation by Kishani Widyaratna, from Picador and The White Review.

We have a very meta show for you this month: the theme is conversation, so we’ll be talking about writing about talking, from the conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities to the pithy dialogue in Bridget Jones’ Diary. You could even say that it’s a conversation about… conversations! As usual, our theme is inspired by our guest Sally Rooney, whose excellent debut novel Conversations with Friends tells the story of two female friends and former lovers, and the complicated relationship they fall into with an older married couple. Listen in and tell all your friends!

The literary essay is a slippery and expansive form, and has encompassed everything from an attempt to define the word ‘camp’ to a dispatch from a cruise ship. This month we interview writer Brian Dillon about his forthcoming book, Essayism – a collection of essays about essays and an ode to the form in all its machinations. We also discuss some of our favourite essay writers including Michel de Montaigne, Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace, plus all the usual recommendations.

From Thomas Mann to Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande, library shelves heave with stories about the struggle to understand and overcome illness. This month, we've teamed up with The Wellcome Book Prize, which celebrates literature that engages with the topics of health and medicine and the many ways they touch our lives. We interviewed two of the authors on their excellent shortlist: David France, whose narrative history How to Survive a Plague is a riveting and devastating first-hand account of the fight against AIDS in the USA; and Sarah Moss, whose fifth novel The Tidal Zone is a complex and beautiful story about family life in the wake of a serious medical emergency. Listen in for all this and a more general discussion of medicine in literature, as well as all the usual recommendations. So kick back, pop a Vitamin C, and let us be your remedy for the next hour.

It seems the Western world has begun to eat itself, so in defiance, this month we bring you a show celebrating the rich diversity of immigrants in literature. From Vladamir Nabokov to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, immigrant writers have been getting the job expertly done for a very long time. Our guest is Julianne Pachico, a Colombian-American writer whose debut book The Lucky Ones is a collection of linked stories set in Colombia and New York. Just push play to hear Julianne's take on the immigrant writer's experience, our thoughts on the immigrant literary narrative, and all the usual recommendations. At least in literature our borders can remain open!

Do illustrations have a place in the novel? Pictures were commonplace in nineteenth-century books by authors like Thackeray and Dickens, and yet today almost all grown-up fiction is devoid of any illustrations, with a few notable exceptions including the work of W.G. Sebald and Douglas Coupland. Should a case be made for bringing them back? Our guest is the Irish writer Sara Baume whose first novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither has won and been shortlisted for a whole host of prizes, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, A Line Made by Walking, is not only illustrated with photographs, but is infused with ideas from contemporary art. Listen in as we talk to Sara and then discuss our favourite illustrations.