In Norway, Rachel Kushner is best known for her 2014 novel The Flamethrowers, set in New York’s art world. In Kushner’s new, critically acclaimed and Booker nominated novel The Mars Room, we are introduced to a very different yet also very American milieu. Here we meet Romy Hall, who is in prison for killing a man who followed and tormented her. Through Hall’s life inside the prison walls, Kushner is able to describe “her country’s fall from grace. This is not the land of the free; no one has choices and everyone is guilty,” as the Guardian pointed out in their review. In this episode Rachel Kushner talks about her authorship with Norwegian author and psychiatrist Finn Skårderud. The conversation took place on October 2nd 2019.

 

Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.

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