
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Author Sofi Oksanen shares with Olga Smirnova how she begins a new novel. Olga witnesses how Sofi painstakingly gathers details for the lives of her characters, from choosing the colour of their nail varnish, to the perfumes they prefer, and the difference in the smell of Estonian and Soviet women. Olga visits Sofi’s writing studio in a bohemian quarter of Helsinki where they both listen to the silence which is so important for Sofi to write. We discover why sometimes kneading dough and chopping carrots or onions can help the process. Having an Estonian heritage, Sofi is fascinated by Soviet history. The theme of war in Ukraine is never far from Olga's conversations with Sofi as they discuss how it impacts upon the writing process.
By BBC World Service4.5
3232 ratings
Author Sofi Oksanen shares with Olga Smirnova how she begins a new novel. Olga witnesses how Sofi painstakingly gathers details for the lives of her characters, from choosing the colour of their nail varnish, to the perfumes they prefer, and the difference in the smell of Estonian and Soviet women. Olga visits Sofi’s writing studio in a bohemian quarter of Helsinki where they both listen to the silence which is so important for Sofi to write. We discover why sometimes kneading dough and chopping carrots or onions can help the process. Having an Estonian heritage, Sofi is fascinated by Soviet history. The theme of war in Ukraine is never far from Olga's conversations with Sofi as they discuss how it impacts upon the writing process.

90,971 Listeners

7,721 Listeners

3,368 Listeners

1,055 Listeners

5,538 Listeners

1,797 Listeners

1,829 Listeners

1,089 Listeners

1,960 Listeners

360 Listeners

349 Listeners

362 Listeners

1,541 Listeners

242 Listeners

476 Listeners

59,522 Listeners

3,215 Listeners

769 Listeners

286 Listeners

16,487 Listeners

482 Listeners

679 Listeners

2,155 Listeners

76 Listeners