Abdourahman Waberi discusses his most autobiographical work to date. Essential listening for readers of Francophone literature!

An autobiographical first novel, The Last One tells the story of Fatima and her family. The confusing polarities between different worlds and cultures that are portrayed sparked an intense Media debate in France. Although based on true events and experiences, Fatima Daas changed certain aspects in order to be free to write what she wanted, and convey her feelings about specific events.   Tune in to hear a lively conversation with Fatima Daas and podcast host Georgia de Chamberet, about...

Faïza Guène writes about normal people living in urban tower block estates surrounding cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Her first novel, Kiffe kiffe demain, published in England under the title Just Like Tomorrow, sold over 400,000 copies when it came out and has been translated into 26 different languages. She was just nineteen. Tune in to hear her lively conversation with translator of sixteen years, Sarah Ardizzone, and host Georgia de Chamberet, about inner city school life, the...

Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, became an instant, international literary sensation when it was published in France in January 2020. Her beautifully written, intimate and powerful description of her relationship in the mid-1980s with the French author Gabriel Matzneff, when she was fourteen and he fifty, is a beautifully written universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, resilience and healing. Translator, Natasha Lehrer, and Georgia de Chamberet, discuss libertarian...

Beka Adamashvili's Bestseller pokes fun at literary pretentiousness, humbug and bookish aspirations with wit and verve. Hear him, his translator and Georgia de Chamberet discuss satire and Georgian culture.

The Fig Tree is a remarkable portrait of a country’s fragmentation and a family’s fracture, making forLucy Popescu's illuminating discussion with author Goran Vojnović and translator Olivia Hellewell

In THE WHITE DRESS, Nathalie Léger tells the story of Pippa Bacca, a thirty-three-year-old Italian feminist performance artist who decided to hitchhike from Milan to Jerusalem wearing a white wedding dress to symbolise “marriage between different peoples and nations.” Through her intense examination of Bacca’s final work and of the often polarised public reaction to the role of women in art, Léger also compellingly addresses her own conflicted relationship with her elderly mother.Does Bacca’s...

Georgia de Chamberet interviews Philip Gwyn Jones who has extensive experience at the heart of literary publishing having started his career at the late, lamented Flamingo imprint at HarperCollins, then founding Portobello Books and merging it with Granta Books, moving on to Scribe, and since June this year, heading up the Picador imprint at Macmillan.“You were the first British editor to offer a book contract to Jenny Erpenbeck, Ove Knausgaard, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Kathryn Schulz...

Lucy Popescu interviews Tommy Wieringa and his translator from Dutch, Sam Garrett. Wieringa's novel The Death of Murat Idrissi was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019. In 2018 he won the Bookspot Literatuurprijs for his novel De heilige Rita, The Blessed Rita, published this year by Scribe UK. It is a compelling portrait of the forgotten and Wieringa makes a strong case for empathy with those living on the margins of society.“Did you grow up in a rural or urban...

Interview avec le romancier, essayiste, critique et poète marocain le plus vendu au niveau international, Tahar Ben Jelloun, au sujet de son livre, Le Terrorisme explique à nos enfants. Cette semaine les complices présumés sont devant le tribunal de Paris pour les attentats de janvier 2015.Pouvez-vous décrire brièvement à nos auditeurs anglophones les racines du terrorisme en France et quelles sont les objectifs présumés des terroristes?Comment pensez vous que l’État pourrait contrôler ses...

The Moroccan poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist, Tahar Ben Jelloun, is one of France's most celebrated writers. He has written extensively about Moroccan culture, the immigrant experience, human rights, and sexual identity.With the trial opening this week in Paris over the January 2015 attacks on the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and a kosher supermarket that killed seventeen people, Terrorism: Conversations with My Daughter (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) is a...

Christopher MacLehose brought WG Sebald, José Saramago, Haruki Murakami, Claudio Magris, Javier Marías, Jin Yong and many others to English-language readers. He is credited as having launched the bestselling genre of crime fiction in translation now known as “Nordic Noir”.In 1984 you published Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg, followed by Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander’s series in the 1990s a.k.a. “the father of Nordic noir”, Jo Nesbo in the 2000s, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl...

“‘And this also’, said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.’ This epigraph, taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sets the tone for Mytting’s sweeping investigation of legend, superstition, and the effects of industrial and ideological change on a small, secluded village in rural Norway . . . A powerful contemporary narrative that is rooted in history.” Rachel Goldblatt, The BookBlast DiaryWhat were your sources for the pagan, Viking and Christian folklore...

"Tazmamart was an underground military prison in southeast Morocco where those considered enemies of the king were detained from 1972 to 1991. It was built after two failed coup d’états against Hassan II of Morocco. Many of those detained were unwitting participants in the alleged coup . . ." Lucy Popescu, The BookBlast DiaryHow easy is to forgive a regime and one’s former torturers?What were Aziz’s primary motives behind writing this book – to lay ghosts to rest? To effect change? The world...

The world of publishing has changed a great deal since you first founded Carcanet in 1969 with Peter Jones, Gareth Reeves, working from a farmhouse kitchen table. What is the magic ingredient meaning you have been able to adapt and evolve?Publishing poetry is a tricky business. Your list comprises collections by established English language poets, new editions of work by deceased writers, and newcomers on the scene. Tell us about five of your lead titles in translation, and what makes each...

James Womack is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Spanish and Portuguese Section at Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam College. He reveals how he landed in Spain and translating Manuel Vilas’s latest collection of poetry and short fiction, Heaven, published this year by Carcanet Press. The author of fourteen collections of poetry, seven books of essays, and seven novels, Vilas’s novel Ordesa was a bestseller in Spain; is forthcoming in English with Canongate in November 2020.   “Vilas is...

"Anna Kim’s The Great Homecoming is a sweeping tale of friendship and betrayal that explores the devastating impact of the Korean War, Russian and American politicking and the Cold War on individuals, families and cities in Korea and Japan during the 1950s and ’60s. It may be a historical novel, but it puts people – a people; an entire nation – at its heart. This slick and accomplished translation by Jamie Lee Searle is sure to widen Kim’s fanbase and acclaim, and rightly so." Rachel...

The Swiss writer and photographer, Nicolas Bouvier, (1929-98) was a traveller in the real sense of the word, navigating different worlds and writing about now forgotten communities. He gives us alternative perspectives on places like the Balkans, Iran, Azerbaijan, Japan, China, Korea and the highlands of Scotland.The Way of the World, The Scorpion Fish and So It Goes have become cult reads. Hear his translator Robyn Marsack and publisher Rose from Eland Books discuss why Nicolas Bouvier such...

Publishing classics requires a special acuity. What makes a classic?Pushkin Press focuses on modern classics, mostly translated works. How did you discover your most successful no-longer-forgotten comeback author, Stefan Zweig?What type of person do you think makes a very good translator?Hear Adam Freudenheim, publisher & MD of Pushkin Press, answer these questions and give unexpected insights as he talks about his love of literature and publishing translations. Presented by Georgia de...

J.S. Margot’s  memoir, Mazel Tov, "is the story of an extraordinary friendship – in fact several extraordinary friendships that marked the twenties of the author J.S.Margot. At first sight it is the story of a young Flemish woman at university in Antwerp who teaches the four children of an Orthodox Jewish family to earn a bit of extra money. It is also the story of her first great love for an Iranian political refugee. In both cases she is exposed to a culture and religion that is not her...

Michèle Roberts is the author of twelve highly-acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also published poetry and short stories, and is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.  Topics: Born a twin. Growing up in Edgware outside London; summer holidays in Etretat, Normandy; Roman Catholic schooling and rebellion; becoming a writer and being...

Narisa Chakrabongse, the founder and CEO of River Books, and the great granddaughter of King Rama V (Chulalongkorn) of Siam, is the editor of the Oxford River Books English-Thai Dictionary. Chakrabongse Villas, the family home, is a small boutique hotel in Bangkok. I caught up with her some months ago when she was in town, to talk about her unusual Thai-Russian-British background, being a foreigner living in a strange land and, of course, River Books, which you can visit online at...

Reggae legend, Keith Anderson, known as Bob Andy, talks about his life and times in a rare and exclusive interview. Best known in the UK for the track recorded with Marcia Griffiths "Young, Gifted and Black" (1970), he is widely regarded as "one of reggae's most influential songwriters," Wikipedia. The conversation takes in his childhood in Kingston, Maxfield Park children's home, Kingston Parish Church choir and Tyrone Evans. The Paragons. Studio One. His first solo hit record (1967) "I've...

Maggie Gee is the author of fifteen books, thirteen of which are novels, including her latest, Blood, which is published by Fentum Press.She talks about being born to working-class parents and climbing into an uneasy place between classes; winning a major open scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she did an MA in English literature and an MLitt on Surrealism in England; breaking into the publishing game; being selected as of the original Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists in...