A reinterpretation of Genesis 22, Abraham nearly sacrificing his son Isaac, that blew my mind. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the ideas that are at the heart of great novels as...

Start a story that never began and won’t end, spreading like chill to everything made of words, the kind of release that comes from depriving your most often used senses and engaging the ones you neglected. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at...

A soldier reflects on a just-finished mission to systematically round up and expel those left behind in the small village of Khirbet Khizeh. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the...

From King David (aka Kid Bethlehem) to Meyer Lansky via Bugsy Siegel, and the many pulled in their wake, a novel that charges from Las Vegas to Jerusalem, capitals of imaginary kingdoms. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and...

Interview with Todd Hasak-Lowy – author and translator of novels from Hebrew to English, including Dror Burstein’s Netanya – with digressions into Orly Castel-Bloom, Yaakov Shabtai, different kinds of literary culture and the novels they produce. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the...

Is it a novel? Memoirs? A book of geology? Anthropology? Marine Biology? Yes yes yes. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the ideas that are at the heart of great novels as well as...

Permanent winter in a desert climate, a dentist with no face, a woman finding material wealth in the midst of poverty, a governmental minister whose full time job is to attend funerals – all this and much, much, much more.   Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains)...

The man who keeps surviving terrorist attacks and the person who is determined to finish him off once and for all square off in this chapter by chapter account of what goes wrong when you add the human element to a simple ideological cataclysm.   Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the...

A heavyweight tale in featherweight prose. A beautiful story about a boy who slips away into adulthood. A ghost story about a person who’s still alive.   Burning Books is back with a brand new season! Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of...

Part One of the Doyle’s The Last Roundup charts the raising, rising and falling of Henry Smart, scamp of Dublin, caught up in the machine of so-called national so-called liberation. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the ideas that...

A sliver of a book unfolds as a triptych, brilliant and beautiful, the subtlest of writing making the greatest of waves. Featuring Walter Benjamin.. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the ideas that are at the heart of great novels...

Somebody please hand me a glossary of terrible non-puns from the 1910s, although no post-rationalisation is going to save this dip into the addled mind of a bureaucratic toff. By the author of some very good novels as well as this one. Dot and carry one, WHATEVER THAT MEANS. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the...

Part one of Pat Barker’s justly renowned trilogy about WWI (re)introduces us to Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Dr William Rivers and Billy Prior – all men who have been changed beyond recognition by a new, modern mode of civilisation destruction – wash, rinse, repeat. With additional cameos by Erich Maria Remarque and Modris Eksteins.   Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy,...

Elena is friends with Lila, whom hurts Elena in all kinds of ways that Elena finds fascinating, and painful. Slums, slums, slums, creepy older men, and not a single moment of levity. Prepare yourself. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of...

Jan and Dirk were inseparable as teenagers, right up till the moment they separated. That didn’t end the friendship, though, which lives on even as the two grow estranged from one another. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the...

Part Two of Ghosh’s ‘Ibis’ Trilogy looks at the run-up to the Opium Wars. From Bombay to Canton, Mauritius to Malacca – set sail for adventure, knowledge, and a number of excellent descriptions of the twists and turns of the early 18th century, globalised drug trade. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy,...

New Jersey stands in for Algeria, not that Frank Bascombe would have noticed, living the good life and everything’s okay and nothing bears too much looking into – like the giant chasm of nothingness opening up beneath his feet. With guest appearances from Steinbeck, Faulkner and AC himself. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking...

Important news from Eric! Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading, the craft of writing, the ideas that are at the heart of great novels as well as novels that try to be great, but don’t quite make it. http://litopia.com/shows/burn/  

In the quiet Jura region of France, a physician goes completely haywire in a series of crimes that are hard for his friends and acquaintances to grasp. But then their grasp loosens further. And disappears altogether. Because the man at the centre, the man they thought they knew, turns out to be a dangerous and violent stranger. And now I know what it feels like to write a Dateline teaser. Non-fiction. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics,...

Tender Asher Lev has a gift – he can draw exceptionally well – and a drive to be an artist. Everyone around him has a drive to make him into a leader in the Ladover Hasidic community, spreading the word of Ladover Hasidism to the far corners of the world. Something has to give. It gives. A story that starts very well. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning...

Monk on the run in 14th Century England has more to worry about than building himself a time machine to get out of 14th Century England. Obviously kidding about the sci-fi bit because this is Barry Unsworth. The book is the time machine. The moral of the story is less story, more moral. Photo Douglas R Witt Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books...

Hartmann and Fibitch arrived in England as refugees on the Kindertransport and then they had had wives and children and those children had families and – what was the point of this story again? Served (saved?) with a side of Sebald (how can you not) plus the flavour of Rushforth, which is the name of an author. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books...

The real life murder mystery of a CBS reporter is foreground and backdrop for a modern day high school student trying to figure out why the wrong man was put down. Also a love story. Salonic. Picture: George Laoutaris Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the singeworthy, looking at the pleasures (and pains) of reading,...

Pinneberg is the Little Man; What Now is what everyone is asking at the outset of the Depression, when this novel is set. Fallada’s novel is about the piece by piece destruction of a young man by forces that are both incomprehensibly great and pathetically familiar, from the collapse of the world economy to the failure of basic decency. I’m overwhelmed just writing this ditty. But that’s what you get when you read Hans Fallada. Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From...

Medical intern sent by boss to spy on a painter named of Strauch.  What the intern finds is the gaping wound of Lower Austria, which may or may not stand in for the entire world. Extremely bleak.  Extremely funny.  Basically, extreme in all senses. Photo: Florin Draghici Download the mp3 file Subscribe in iTunes >>> From recent débuts to classics, fiction to non-fiction, memoirs, philosophy, science, history and journalism, Burning Books separates the smoking from the...