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


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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

Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden in conversation with Adam Biles

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

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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

Rosa Rankin-Gee on Dreamland

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

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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

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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

Ece Temelkuran on Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now

This week we are joined by Niven Govinden and Musa Okwonga. On the face of it, their new novels—"Diary of a Film" and "In the End it was All About Love"—couldn’t seem more different, and yet they dialogue in many interesting ways. In conversation with Adam Biles, they talk art, love, cities, sexuality, belonging and food.

Buy Diary of a Film here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780349700717/diary-of-a-film
Buy In the End it Was All About Love here: http://roughtradebooks.com/books/in-the-end-it-was-all-about-love-2/

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In addition to Diary of a Film, Niven Govinden is the author of five previous novels, most recently This Brutal House, which was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and shortlisted for the Polari and Gordon Burn Prizes.

Follow Niven on Instagram: @niven_govinden

Musa Okwonga is a writer, broadcaster and musician. The co-host of the Stadio football podcast, he has published one collection of poetry and three books about football, the first of which, A Cultured Left Foot, was nominated for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He has three books forthcoming in 2021: In The End, It Was All About Love (Rough Trade), a memoir set in Berlin; One of Them (Unbound), a memoir about his five years at Eton College; and Striking Out (Scholastic), a children’s novel written in collaboration with and based on the life of Ian Wright. Musa’s work has appeared in various outlets, including Africa Is A Country, The Byline Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist and The Ringer. He lives in Berlin.

Follow Musa on Twitter: @Okwonga

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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

Niven Govinden & Musa Okwonga in conversation

We were delighted to welcome back Hari Kunzru to discuss his recent novel Red Pill, a journey into the moral darkness of our times, and one of the most exciting and provocative books of the past year.

Buy Red Pill here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781471194474/red-pill

Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore
Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com

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Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His new novel Red Pill will be published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone, coming in September from Pushkin Industries. He lives in New York City.

Follow Hari on Twitter: @harikunzru

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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

Listen to Alex Freiman's Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=1jyKZFg2QS6RpVIfoCLLPQ&dl_branch=1

Hari Kunzru on Red Pill

This week we were joined by Jennifer Lucy Allan, author of one of the most peculiar and moving non-fiction books of the year. The Foghorn’s Lament is one woman’s quest to uncover and understand the booming, lonely machine that soundtracks the oceans.

Buy The Foghorn’s Lament here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9781474615037/the-foghorns-lament

Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore
Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com

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Jennifer Lucy Allan is a writer, journalist and broadcaster with a PhD in foghorns. She has been a journalist for over a decade, writing on underground and experimental music for publications including The Guardian, The Quietus, and The Wire, and was previously The Wire’s Online Editor. She is a presenter on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, and wrote and presented Life, Death and the Foghorn for BBC Radio 4. She also runs the archival record label Arc Light Editions. THE FOGHORN’S LAMENT is her first book.

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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

Jennifer Lucy Allan on The Foghorn's Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast

In the second episode from our first in-store event in 18 months, Katie Kitamura discusses her deeply affecting, Barack Obama-approved, fourth novel Intimacies with S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.

Buy Intimacies here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781787332003/intimacies-a-barack-obama-summer-2021-reading-pick

Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore
Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com

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Katie Kitamura's most recent novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. It was named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications, translated into 16 languages, and is being adapted for film. Her two previous novels, Gone to the Forest and The Longshot were both finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Santa Maddalena, Kitamura has written for publications including the New York Times Book Review, Guardian, BOMB, and Triple Canopy. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

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

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Katie Kitamura on Intimacies

For our first podcast of la rentrée we were delighted to be joined by Elif Shafak, with us to discuss her mesmerising new novel The Island of Missing Trees, a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.

Buy The Island of Missing Trees. here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9780241434994/the-island-of-missing-trees-the-top-10-sunday-times-bestseller

Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore

Become a Friend of S&Co here: https://friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com *

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Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 55 languages. Her latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall’s inaugural book club, The Reading Room. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford where she is an honorary fellow.

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

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Elif Shafak on The Island of Missing Trees

This week we’re joined Anuk Arudpragasm to discuss A Passage North, his Booker-shortlisted story of age and youth, loss and survival in Sri Lanka.

Buy A Passage North here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783786947/a-passage-north
Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore

Become a Friend of S&Co here: https:/.friendsofshakespeareandcompany.com

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It begins with a message: a telephone call informing Krishan that his grandmother”s former care-giver, Rani, has died in unexpected circumstances, at the bottom of a well in her village in the north, her neck broken by the fall. The news arrives on the heels of an email from Anjum, an activist he fell in love with four years earlier while living in Delhi, bringing with it the stirring of distant memories and desires.
As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province for the funeral, so begins a passage into the soul of an island devastated by violence. Written with precision and grace, A Passage North is a poignant memorial for the missing and the dead, and a luminous meditation on time, consciousness, and the lasting imprint of the connections we make with others.

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Anuk Arudpragasam was born in Colombo and currently lives between Sri Lanka and India. His debut novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize as well as the Internationaler Literaturpreis. He received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 2019.

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

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Anuk Arudpragasam on A Passage North

As a little treat this Christmas, we’re delighted to bring you an extract of Cerys Matthews reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas. Cerys read the same extract when she last visited us at the bookshop in December 2015. It was such a magical moment that, when we learned that Cerys had recorded this story for posterity, we asked if we could share some of it with you.

The full version is available on CD here: https://cerysmatthews.co.uk/product/dylan-thomas-a-childs-christmas-poems-and-tiger-eggs/
Or to stream on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4r8YyMz1maFauVfo9RznXv?si=WSGzsLOJSUu5xzDjY-0Q1w

If you enjoy listening to our podcast and would like to spend even more of 2022 with us in Paris, you can now subscribe for exclusive regular bonus episodes.
On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3GnyeDYQv5TagIOLt6qvW3?si=rNL8GdYyT_WWxVl5w7l7SA
On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/shakespeare-and-company-writers-books-and-paris/id1040121937?l=en
Or on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sandco

Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32H…kLNA&dl_branch=1

BONUS: Cerys Matthews reads A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas

Our guest this week is the wonderful Rebecca Solnit discussing Orwell’s Roses, her fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener, whose political writing was grounded in his passion for the natural world.
Buy Orwell’s Roses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/I/9781783788620/orwells-roses
Browse our online store here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/15/online-store/16/bookstore
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SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR BONUS FEATURES
If you want to spend even more time at Shakespeare and Company, you can now subscribe for regular bonus episodes including:
An initiation into the world of rare book collecting;
The chance to expand your reading horizons as our passionate booksellers recommend their favourite titles;
Handpicked classic interviews from our archive;
And an insight into what makes your favourite writers tick as they answer searching questions from our Café’s Proust questionnaire.
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From 1936 to 1940, the newly-wed George Orwell lived in a small cottage inHertfordshire, writing, and tending his garden. When Rebecca Solnit visited the cottage, she discovered the descendants of the roses that he had planted many decades previously. These survivors, as well as the diaries he kept of his planting and growing, provide a springboard for a fresh look at Orwell's motivations and drives -and the optimism that countered his dystopian vision - and open up a profound mediation on our relationship to plants, trees and the natural world.
Tracking Orwell's impact on political thought over the last century, Solnit journeys toEngland and Russia, Mexico and Colombia, exploring the political and historical events that shaped Orwell's life and her own. From a history of roses to discussions of climate change and insights into structural inequalities in contemporary society, Orwell's Roses is a fresh reading of a towering figure of 20th century literary and political life, which finds optimism, solace and solutions to our 21st century world.
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Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Call Them By Their True Names, The Mother of All Questions, Men Explain Things to Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. A contributing editor to Harper’s, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.
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
Listen to Alex Freiman’s Play It Gentle here: https://open.spotify.com/album/4gfkDcG32HYlXnBqI0xgQX?si=mf0Vw-kuRS-ai15aL9kLNA&dl_branch=1

Rebecca Solnit on Orwell’s Roses

2nd February - 16th June 2022

933 Pages, 110 readers, (roughly) 70 characters, 18 Sections, 5 months, 1 book. 100 years.

Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES by James Joyce

To listen, subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Friends of Shakespeare and Company read ULYSSES is conceived and produced at Shakespeare and Company in Paris by S&Co Literary Director Adam Biles in collaboration with Professor Lex Paulson, and in partnership with Penguin Classics and Hay Festival.

Find out more about Shakespeare and Company here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com
Buy the Penguin Classics official partner edition of Ulysses here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/d/9780241552636/ulysses
Find out more about Hay Festival here: https://www.hayfestival.com/home

Introducing Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses

The poet discusses her new translation of a Tamil classic.

❤️‍🔥Valentine’s Special: Meena Kandasamy on The Book of Desire❤️‍🔥

In How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t Ian Dunt blows the cobwebs out of the arcane nooks and crannies of the British political system, demystifying it with his clear, compelling, and entertaining prose. He also shines a light upon how the system as it stands does not, in fact, work and, indeed, is often designed not to work.  How Westminster Works and Why it Doesn’t leaves the reader feeling more knowledgable—as you would hope—but also angrier and more energised, more equipped to engage, to argue and perhaps even to change things for the better.

Buy How Westminster Works . . . and Why it Doesn’t: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/7436384/dunt-ian-how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesn-t

How Westminster Works . . . and Why it Doesn’t, with Ian Dunt

Hernan Diaz on his Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, Trust

This week Adam is joined by the Claire-Louise Bennett for a wide-ranging conversation, orbiting around Nightflowers, her immersive installation at Museum of Literature Ireland. They discuss writing, thought processes, class, Huysmans, Ann Quin, the imagination, home, the poetics of space . . . and much, much more.

Claire-Louise Bennett on Nightflowers, her immersive installation at Museum of Literature Ireland

Naomi Klein on Doppelgangers, Conspiracy Theories, and the Shadowlands we all inhabit…

Bloomcast Holiday Special: The Dead

Annabelle Hirsch, A History of Women in 101 Objects

On Friendship, with Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen

Love in the Time of Creative-Writing Classes, with Brandon Taylor

Bidding adieu to Freeman’s, with Jakuta Alikavazovic, Deborah Landau, Juan Gabriel Vazquez

On Allen Ginsberg: His life, his work and his archives, with Pat Thomas and Peter Hale

Percival Everett on James, his subversive reimagining of Huckleberry Finn

Ottessa Moshfegh on bringing Eileen to the screen

Viet Thanh Nguyen on Memory, Migration and Model Minorities

Celebrating Dylan Thomas with Cerys Matthews…with exclusive live music from Flora Hibberd!

Sheila Heti on Alphabetical Diaries

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.

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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

John Freeman reads from The Park

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

An extract from Pond, read by Claire-Louise Bennett

Recorded live from our bookshop, in the heart of Paris, conversations and readings with internationally acclaimed authors. Discover exciting new fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and delve into our archives for events with Zadie Smith, Eddie Izzard, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Dave Eggers, Rachel Cusk, Marlon James, Edouard Louis, Sara Pascoe, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney and many, many more. Hosted by Adam Biles.

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