The Book Club

By The Spectator

Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented weekly by Sam Leith.

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4.5

22 ratings

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FAQs about The Book Club:

How many episodes does The Book Club have?

The podcast currently has 456 episodes available.

The Book Club episodes:

July 10, 2024 Michael Nott: Thom Gunn's Cool Queer Life
My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Michael Nott, author of the new biography Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life. He tells me about the poet's early trauma, his transatlantic identity, his unconventional family and his compartmentalised life, part teaching and writing, part sex, drugs and rock and roll.
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30min
July 03, 2024 Kathleen Jamie: Cairn
In her new book Cairn, the Scots poet Kathleen Jamie sets a capstone of sorts on her trilogy of short prose collections Findings, Surfacing and Sightlines. She joins Sam on this week’s Book Club podcast to talk about why she hesitates to call herself a nature writer, how prose found her late in life, and why whale-watching isn’t what it used to be.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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25min
June 26, 2024 Åsne Seierstad: The Afghans
My guest for this week's Book Club is the journalist and author Åsne Seierstad. She tells me about her new book The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love and Revolt; how and why she constructed a novelistic narrative about real-life people and events, and what her encounters with human rights activist Jamila, Taliban commander Bashir and thwarted student Ariana can tell us about the past, present and future of that troubled country.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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48min
June 19, 2024 Mark Bostridge: In Pursuit of Love
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Mark Bostridge. In his new book In Pursuit of Love: The Search for Victor Hugo’s Daughter, Mark describes his quest to uncover the traces of Adele Hugo and the doomed love affair which cost her her sanity. He tells me how Adele’s story chimed in poignant ways with his own life and what it taught him about the unstable emotional contract between biographer and subject.
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42min
June 12, 2024 Marlon James: A Brief History of Seven Killings
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Marlon James, who ten years ago published his Booker Prize winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. He tells me how that remarkable book came about, how he feared it would be 'my Satanic Verses', what genre means to him, the importance of myth, and what he learned from the X-Men.
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40min
June 05, 2024 Richard Flanagan: Question 7
In this week's Book Club podcast, my guest is the Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan, talking about his extraordinary new book Question 7. It weaves together memoir, reportage and the imaginative work of fiction. Flanagan collides his relationship with his war-traumatised father and his own near-death experience with the lives of H G Wells and Leo Szilard, the Tasmanian genocide and the bombing of Hiroshima. He talks to me about the work fiction can do, the intimate association of memory with shame, and the liberations and agonies of thinking of non-linear time.
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34min
May 29, 2024 The legacy of Franz Kafka
June 3rd marks the centenary of Franz Kafka's death. To talk about this great writer's peculiar style and lasting legacy, I'm joined by two of the world's foremost Kafka scholars. Mark Harman has just translated, edited and annotated a new edition of Kafka's Selected Stories, while Ross Benjamin is the translator of the first unexpurgated edition of Kafka's Diaries. They tell me what they understand by 'Kafkaesque', the unique difficulties he presents in editing and translation, and the unstable relationship between his published works, his notebooks and his troubled life.
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51min
May 22, 2024 Conn Iggulden: Nero
My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Conn Iggulden, probably the best selling author of historical fiction of our day. This week Conn publishes Nero, the first in a new trilogy about the notorious Roman emperor. He tells me about how he learned to write historical fiction, his years-long path to overnight success, and the advantages (and disadvantages) of having an audience comprised of men who can't seem to stop thinking about the Roman Empire.
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43min
May 15, 2024 Olivia Laing: The Garden Against Time
A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! On this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by Olivia Laing to talk about her new book The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. Olivia explores what it is we do when we make a garden, through her own experience of restoring the beautiful garden in her now home. She tells me about what gardens have meant in literary history and myth, how they have occluded certain real-world injustices even as they stand in for utopias, and why Candide's injunction cultiver notre jardin will always be an ambiguous one.
Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.

For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

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33min
May 08, 2024 Jackie Kay: May Day
This week, my guest on the Book Club podcast is the poet Jackie Kay, whose magnificent new book May Day combines elegy and celebration. She tells me about her adoptive parents – a communist trade unionist and a leading figure in CND – and growing up in a household where teenage rebellion could mean going to church. We also discuss her beginnings as a poet, her debt to Robbie Burns and Angela Davis and how grief itself can be a form of protest.
Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.

For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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39min

FAQs about The Book Club:

How many episodes does The Book Club have?

The podcast currently has 456 episodes available.

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