Summary: Hello and welcome back to You Wrote The Book, a book based podcast hosted by Simon Savidge. Each fortnight over the coming months he will be joined by a special guest author to discuss their life as a writer and as a reader, from the current novel they have published to the first book they read and everything in between. Simon’s guest for this episode is Anthony Marra whose debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena completely blew him away when he read it last year. A very hard book to try and encapsulate in a blurb, it tells of several people living in Chechnya during the decades in which it has seen much conflict and devastation and yet few people know about. Simon spoke to Anthony about what it was about Chechnya and its history that attracted him to writing about it, the research he had to do when there are so few books about it, how he brought the research to life and more. He started by asking Anthony to try and encapsulate what A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is about as he was struggling to do it for the intro... In two weeks time I will be joined by Armistead Maupin to talk about the Tales of the City series and its finale with The Days of Anna Madrigal. Joining me over the next few episodes will be Natalie Haynes, Emma Jane Unsworth and Emma Healey. If you have any questions for them, would like to suggest authors you think Simon should be getting on the show, or simply want to have a natter about books, you can email youwrotethebook@gmail.com or find us on twitter @youwrotethebook. If you want to hear Simon talking more books do join him every other week with Thomas Otto on The Readers Podcast, you can also find him chatting and reviewing book on his blog Savidge Reads. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes where you can find previous episodes with Christos Tsiolkas, Evie Wyld, Alan Bradley, Niccolo Ammaniti, John Boyne, Hannah Kent, Joanne Harris, Patrick Ness, Damian Barr, Maggie O’Farrell and many more.
