Shakespeare and Company

This week Adam Biles was joined by Ece Temelkuran to discuss her thrilling new book “Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now” a unique and bold manifesto for how all of us can rise to the political and social challenges the world faces. Buy TOGETHER here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780008393816/together Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com * Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators, and her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman and Der Spiegel. She has been twice recognized as Turkey’s most read political columnist, and twice rated as one of the ten most influential people in social media (with 3 million twitter followers). Her recent novel Women Who Blow on Knots won the 2017 Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book Award. Follow Ece Temelkuran on Twitter: @ETemelkuran * Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

We were thrilled to be joined by Rosa Rankin-Gee to discuss her striking second novel Dreamland, a postcard from a near-future (don’t say post-apocalyptic!) Britain that’s may be closer than we think. Hosted by Adam Biles Buy DREAMLAND here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781471193811/dreamland Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com * Rosa Rankin-Gee lives between Ramsgate and South London. Her first novel The Last Kings of Sark won Shakespeare & Company’s Paris Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Vogue, the Paris Review, and Esquire, among others. Follow Rosa on Twitter: @rosarankingee Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

We’re back! Welcome to the relaunched S&Co podcast. For the first episode after a long hiatus, we were thrilled to be joined (remotely!) by Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden to discuss their formally inventive and thematically bold new novels LUCKENBOOTH and MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH. Hosted by Adam Biles. Buy LUCKENBOOTH here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780434023318/luckenbooth Buy MRS DEATH MISSES DEATH here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781838851194/mrs-death-misses-death Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com * Jenni Fagan was born in Scotland. She graduated from Greenwich University and won a scholarship to the Royal Holloway MFA programme. She has just completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. A published poet and novelist, she has won awards from Creative Scotland, Dewar Arts, Scottish Screen and Scottish Book Trust among others, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Jenni was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists after the publication of her debut novel, The Panopticon, which was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize. Her adaptation of The Panopticon was staged by the National Theatre of Scotland to great acclaim. The Sunlight Pilgrims, her second novel, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award and the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award, and saw her win Scottish Author of the Year at the Herald Culture Awards. She lives in Edinburgh with her son. Follow Jenni on Twitter: @Jenni_Fagan Salena Godden is one of Britain’s best loved poets and performers. She is also an activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist and is widely anthologised. She has published several volumes of poetry, the latest of which was Pessimism is for Lightweights, and a literary childhood memoir, Springfield Road. Mrs Death Misses Death is her debut novel. A BBC Radio 4 documentary following Godden’s progress on the novel over twelve months was broadcast in 2018. In November 2020 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Follow Salena on Twitter: @salenagodden Visit Salena’s website: www.salenagodden.co.uk Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time

For this episode, we’re thrilled to be collaborating with the brilliant Fitzcarraldo Editions to bring you an exclusive extract from the audiobook of their modern classic Pond, performed by its author Claire-Louise Bennett. You can buy the audiobook from the publisher’s website www.fitzcarraldoeditions.com, and of course you can buy a physical copy of Pond from our online store, www.shakespeareandcompany.com where you can also find all manner of new and rare books, gifts, and tote bags, which we ship from Paris to wherever you are in the world. About Claire-Louise Bennett Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire in the southwest of England. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council Ireland and Galway City Council. Pond is her first collection of stories. Music, as always, by Alex Freiman from his album, Play it Gentle, available on our online store: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/search?q=Alex+freiman&type=books

We were delighted to welcome Karthika Naïr and Marilyn Hacker back to the bookshop. During lockdown, Marilyn and Karthika began writing Renga — a collaborative form of Japanese poetry — to each other, building up a beautiful and compelling body of work that engages with both the micro and the macro of this unprecedented moment. This meeting was the first time that these close friends had been in the same room as each other for several months, and their readings ring with the sorrow of separation but also the joy of rediscovery. * Renga through a Lockdown: Shortly after France declared a full lockdown in March 2020, Marilyn Hacker invited Karthika Naïr to join her in creating a renga. Renga, literally “linked poem”, is the ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, which has evolved a little through the ages. Poets take turns to compose alternating tanka (5-7-5 and 7-7 syllabled-lines in the stanza) and each poet begins their opening line with word/s or idea/s from the preceding poem. Marilyn and Karthika’s renga are chronicles of their daily lives through the months of lockdown, triggered as much by immediate experiences in Paris as by echoes and concerns from friends and family in the US, Lebanon, India and elsewhere. And while both live in Paris, the distance between their homes (one in the 3rd arrondissement, the other in the 10th) - usually one of a few miles - seemed to multiply in this new world, with neighbourhoods transforming into distinct, new, terrain.  If you’d like to see a video of some of these readings, keep an eye on the social media of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival. * Marilyn Hacker is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Blazons ( 2019) and A Stranger’s Mirror(2015) , a book of essays, Unauthorized Voices (2010),  a collaborative book, Diaspo/Renga, written with Deema K. Shehabi (2014) and  seventeen books of translations of French and Francophone poets, most recently Samira Negrouche’s The Olive Trees’ Jazz (2020). She received the 2009 American PEN Award for poetry in translation, and the international Argana Prize for Poetry from the Beit as-Sh’ir/ House of Poetry in Morocco in 2011. She lives in Paris.  Find more of Marilyn’s work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marilyn-hacker Karthika Naïr is the author of several books, including The Honey Hunter, illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet. She has helmed the scripts of several dance productions, such as the multiple-award-winning DESH (2011), Akram Khan’s dance solo. Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, her reimagining in verse of the Mahabharata, won the 2015 Tata Literature Live! Award for Book of the Year (Fiction), and was highly commended at the 2016 Forward Prizes (UK). Naïr’s poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals across the world, including Granta, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Magazine, Indian Literature, The Wolf, and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. She is a 2012 Sangam House Fellow, a 2013 Toji Foundation Fellow and was awarded a Villa Marguerite Yourcenar Fellowship in 2015. Her latest book is the collaborative Over and Under Ground in Mumbai & Paris (2018), a travelogue in verse, written with Sampurna Chattarji, and illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet and Roshni Vyam. Find more of Karthika’s work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150393/remaindering-habits And here: https://www.danceumbrella.co.uk/2017/08/29/six-degrees-otherness-part-2/

We were delighted to be joined by Lindsey Tramuta to discuss her second book The New Parisienne—her fascinating follow-up to The New Paris—in which she explores the women and ideas shaping the French capital. We have a limited number of signed copies of The New Parisienne available in our online store: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/s/9781419742811/the-new-parisienne-the-women-ideas-shaping-paris

Welcome back to the Shakespeare and Company Podcast. We’re thrilled to return with a reading from a dear friend of the bookshop, John Freeman, reading from his new book of poetry The Park, a collection inspired by the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. * Thanks for listening! We're now able to ship orders again. If you want to support Shakespeare and Company through this tough period, and bring a little taste of the bookshop to wherever you are in the world, please consider placing an order for a book or a gift, subscribing to a Year of Reading, or purchasing a gift voucher for future use. Visit our website www.shakespeareandcompany.com

In this episode Adam Biles joins Andy Miller—one of the presenters of the brilliant Backlisted podcast and author of The Year of Reading Dangerously—on a visit to the recent Huysmans exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, picking up their discussion of Huysmans’s novel A Rebours, begun two years earlier on episode 57 of Backlisted. Listen to Backlisted: https://www.backlisted.fm Find out more about the Husymans exhibition at Musée d’Orsay: https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/events/exhibitions/in-the-museums/exhibitions-in-the-musee-dorsay/article/huysmans-critique-dart-47721.html?tx_kleemobileredirection=1&cHash=3f98abcf21

In the first of a special series of podcasts, we sat down with Jonathan Coe a few days after the UK left the EU, to catch up about the European reception to his novel Middle England, his hopes and fears post-Brexit, and the dangers when politics and nostalgia mix.

We were joined by Chigozie Obioma to discuss the mesmerising epic An Orchestra of Minorities, his second novel to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

We were joined by Lucy Ellmann to discuss her “extraordinary . . . astounding . . . amazing” (Irish Times) new novel, the Booker-shortlisted Ducks, Newburyport.

We were joined by Guy Gunaratne for a reading from his searing debut In Our Mad and Furious City, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize.

We were joined by the brilliant Nathan Englander to discuss his “rollicking, generous-hearted tale of faith, identity and family” (FT) kaddish.com.

We were joined by John Freeman to discuss his extraordinary Dictionary of the Undoing, described by Publishers Weekly “a protest, a poem, and a plea . . . a pocket manual for informed political dissent and a must-read for all thinking citizens.”

We were joined by Jeanette Winterson for a reading from Frankissstein, her riotous reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic.