¶ Intro / Opening
🎵 Music
¶ Introducing Knausgaard and Writing Philosophy
Hello and welcome to Ask Penguin, the podcast all about books, their authors and their publishers. I'm Rihanna Dillon and in each episode I sit down with brilliant writers and penguin colleagues to talk about their latest work and the books they can't stop recommending. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Carlover Knosgard. Carlover is best known for his six-part autobiographical series, My Struggle, beginning with a death in the family and ending with the end.
The books trace his journey from childhood through to adulthood, and together they create an extraordinary portrait of human life. The series has been described as frame-breaking, obsessively detailed, and radically confessional. Over the years, Karlover has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Braga Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize.
His latest novel, The School of Night, is part of the Morning Star sequence, though it absolutely can be read as a standalone. It is genuinely quite horrifying and totally absorbing. Set in Southeast London in nineteen eighty five, it follows Christian Hadland, a twenty year old photography student who's left his family in Norway in search of success and recognition.
When he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist, Christian begins to believe that anything is possible in art, but after one terrible night his future hangs in the balance, and that night threatens to follow him for the rest of his life. Carlova, welcome to Ask Penguin. Thank you so much for joining us, being here.
Thank you for having me.
So The School of Night is the fourth book in your Morning Star sequence.
Yeah, I think so, yes.
But it also works as a standalone.
Yeah, very much so.
Very much so. So was that always your intention?
No it wasn't. I I just started writing uh the Morning Star novel and I realized um after 600 pages that the story is much bigger and then I didn't know where to go so I just picked up on Something else and took it into the same The same world. And then I realised when you have a world you have many minor characters and you can just, you know, go in there and look what they are doing. So it's expanding and it's like for me like total freedom.
But with uh the fact that things had been said in the books before, which kind of sets uh the past for them. So it's yeah, it's Writing these books and being in this and I know I could have continued people and events and they're all connected but I won't do that I've written six now and I will be seven and then that's
Seven and done. Yeah. Okay. How do you know that you will be done after seven? If you do potentially have ideas for forty three
Yeah well then I started this in twenty twenty and that means that I will be in it for six years when I'm done. And that's a long time and I have so many other books I want to write and I realise I can't stay in here for longer. I need to get out. And it was the same with my self-biographical series. It was six novels and that's about it.
That's your number. Yeah. It's so interesting'cause some people it'll take them six years to write one.
Yeah. I used to do that. My first novel I guess it took me more ten years to get there. Mm-hmm and then the second book was five years and then the third book was five years. And most of that time I spent not being able to write. It's incredibly frustrating. And then I did my struggle and the concept of my struggle was I accept everything that comes. I write about everything that comes.
And then I realised this is the way, so that's how I start an oval. I just start, no matter how bad it is, I just continue. No matter how bad it is after a hundred pages, just continue. And then something happens, then it becomes a novel. Then it's okay. It's not good or but it's it's it's a novel, it's a thing, it's um So now my... what I'm doing is one lower layer. And I work five days a week. Five hours a day.
Yeah.
Yeah. But if you do that, then then it's a novel a year.
Five hours a day. That's a very you're so you're very rigid in your
Not really. I mean those five hours I can sleep or eat or do whatever I want. But the fact is that we have to be close to the writing.
Yeah.
Every day and then the weekends do something else. And then yeah, then has been Six nobles done in that way. Six years, six nobles.
¶ Crafting London Settings and Narrative Details
I hate it when people make things very London centric all of the time, but I am somebody who lives in London and so I'm very fond of things that are also set in London and this is your first novel which is set in London. So what drew you to basing it Not only in London but also London of forty years ago.
Yeah. So London, that was basically Christopher Marlowe and Depford.
Right.
I read about him many years ago. I didn't know who he was. I read an um an essay by uh Busches and he makes everything fantastic. And it was about Shakespeare and then this fantastic person, you know, popped up.
Great character in the
Ja, jag har inte hört om honom. Jag frågade, hur är det här? Vad har hänt här? Många år sedan. Och jag kom till London och sa, Deptford? Var det inte där man var killd? Ja, det var. And okay, this is I have to write so I have to set it in London. That was the one thing. But why nineteen eighty six? It's because I grew up in Norway. So nineteen eighty six I would have been um like eighteen, seventeen, eighteen.
all the music I listened to when I was a kid came from her it was British music. All the bands, you know. culture. And that's weird because I grew up in a little remote island in Norway. incredibly different from Manchester or from London. Mm-hmm. Uh that was where I was longing to, you know. And then when I came up with this novel has to be London.
When should I set it? I don't want to write about contemporary London because I don't know enough about it. If I set it in 1986, it's like a fictional space for me and I can fill it with the music I loved when I was little.
That's so interesting that you say that you don't know enough about contemporary London, but you live in contemporary London. Yeah. But you didn't live in London in eighty six.
No, ale to...
Yeah.
The details have to be right and all the names that's floating in the politics and everything. But if you do it in nineteen ninety six you can create like a fictional space and you can't really check it uh
Yeah.
Yeah, I did. I let my uh uh I let my um translator Martin Aitkin read it because he's the right age. Mm. And he he corrected, say, Well, you know, when I'm drinking coffee
that didn't
Have those paper cups. They had these kind of plastic cups that got very hot and comfortable and Yeah, exactly. Those kind of details. And those are crucial to get the f the sense of how it is to be there. And then I just guessed well it has to be I'm sure London eighty six was kind of bleak. And gritty and and that's a novel in itself.
Yeah. I really love like the the tactile nature of the detail that you write about. You sort of talk about being very slow in your um ability to tell a story. You go through the minutiae, like the very small details. So what is it do you think about those levels of banality that actually really fascinate a reader, that really bring them into your writing and your world?
Yeah, I don't know. I uh you know when I'm writing I'm I'm sure.
No.
Yeah yeah, but but it it's the details is what the details is it brings you into a certain moment, you know, a certain um presence. And that's where we live. Everything is present. That's where everything is in in the moment. I want to get uh you know, I want to get into the world. And that's my way in is the details and the physicality of it. But if you do that, you know, it could take...
It takes a novel to write about 10 minutes if you do it properly. So it's always, you have to balance it somehow. But that's why it's so many novels and the stories. Hardly I've hardly started with.
¶ Christian's Unplanned Journey in 80s London
Yeah. I think what I really love is how you capture the pub culture in London. Which I sort of hope we never lose, although I feel like we are you hear stories about pubs closing all the time. But this you know, there are parts of this that feels like a real love letter, however bleak to pub culture. So tell us about your way into that, which does feel I don't know, maybe that's a really insular thing to say, but f feels quite uniquely British.
Yeah, it is unique uniquely. It is it is that it's very British. Um I don't know really. I mean I have a character. He's twenty years old, he comes from Norway, he's never seen a big city in his life. He wants to be an artist. What will he do? Yeah, what can he do? Yeah, he goes out, look around at the pub, he goes into the pub. And I kind of, I know I was in Britain in the 90s and I can remember the feeling of...
I I can't explain. But but it is you know, thus this pub had been there many, many, many years and it has never been refurbished or anything. It's like it's uh the smell of smoke and and yeah. So I just let him let him do that and and try to live his you know life as So that I thought it would be. Mm. And uh I didn't think about this represent British culture, this it was just it's there, he's gonna he's gonna go there. Yeah. And that was the way with everything. Um yeah.
And also the the feeling of eighties England. One of my favorite T V series is uh The Smiley series from the eighties. Have you seen that?
Yeah.
It's incredibly slow, but it's and it has but it has that sense of Britain. Mm-hmm. at that time the 70s and the 80s is so present in that film. And I was there when I was a kid, when I was uh I must have been seven years old. It's one of the first grand memories I have. We made a trip to England, drove through England in seventy six. It was incredibly hot and it was
Yeah, the long hot summer of nineteen seventy six.
Yeah, exactly. I didn't know that. And it was you know, garbage and it was it was uh before us it was for me it was absolutely fantastic. Yeah.
Didn't the smell didn't put you off?
No, I didn't. But the most important thing is the is the the post punk thing, the music thing, I think.
Yeah.
Can you tell me a bit about the structure because we sort of move back and forth a little bit in time. How do you map that out and why did you think that for Christians story this would be the right approach?
Yeah. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r Llywodra. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r Llywodra. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r Llywodra. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r Llywodra. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â Llywodra. Well, he has to go home. And then he went home to his family and then I discovered, well, he is really There is something uh not quite good with him. He has actually no empathy, he doesn't care about other people, and that was visible to me when he came home to his parents because he got loving parents.
so there's no kind of psychological reason for him to being such an arsehole because he is an arsehole.
I was gonna say Dick, but yeah.
So that was when he was home, and then he got kind of an affair with a girl there, and I said, okay, he's that bad. And then I sent him back to London.
And continued.
The writing. And I had no idea what's gonna happen. So he got involved with some uh woman there and he stops his bike to have a cigarette and there's someone asking him for a cigarette and he gives a cigarette. And I had no idea that was gonna happen. And that's the kind of the turning point in the novel. Yeah. And then, okay, what's gonna happen now? You know, and it was that all the way for me. Wow. So it was never a plan for me to be...
It's always a surprise for you even as it's
¶ Dark Narratives and Single Perspective
Yeah, there is a scene with uh you know his uh actually uh uh cooking a cat.
Oh my god. I mean I'm glad you brought this up.
Yeah, because it's it was just, you know, his his Danny's a photographer. So he's out taking photos of uh trees without leaves and it thinks, yeah, it kind of remain reminds him of scaffolding and he starts to think about um
Yeah.
And he's a photographer. Okay, maybe c I can make a series of that skelet you know, and then but I need the skeleton. And in an animal, you know, and then maybe I can get a dead cat and what do you do with the dead cat to get to the skeleton? They have to cook it. Wha how what would that be like, you know, with the smell in the little bed sit? And that's the way it den Boken Written. But the bad part för mig ist that it's like everything that happened.
It's real, it's really happening when I'm writing it, you know. And then there is this terrible twist at the end. It was so hard to write. It was like so really you know, crushing t to do but uh but uh but it's it's the lo a novel has a logic on its own. You have to follow have to follow it. Yeah. See where it takes you. And so this took me to some dark places.
I was going to ask'cause it's very rare that I have to I don't get very squeamish in book films, sure, T V sure. But my imagination I feel very safe in it. Mm. It's very rare that I have to put down a book. I had to put down Your book with the cooking of the cat.
Yeah.
Because it made my stomach roil so much. And I was gonna ask you if you do get grossed out by your own writing, because I could smell it, I could see it, I could touch it.
Yeah, no, no, not that. W w w what can really get me is kind of the emotional uh emotional stuff that's going on. That could be very hard and difficult to write. But but those kind of things it's yeah. It's almost like a technical job how to Mm make this thing work on a pitch.
Mm. How to freak your reader out as much as possible. Um and unlike um a lot of the novels in the Morning Star series, the novel is told just by Christians through Christians. perspective. So actually was it a relief to just write in the singular after having written from multiple perspectives or did you enjoy the the challenge of having many voices in your head?
Yeah, I I really um searched that out when I started this series because I've been writing a series about myself being in my own head for so many pages. So I really wanted multiple characters and I also wanted interaction between them and all of that. Almost like a cacophony for me. But then this book just demanded something else. And I I wanted one place where evil isn't just something out there or but that it's like the grain of of something Yeah, maybe I could write about it.
And it's it's in him and you can relate to it and you can maybe even identify with it a little bit, you know. And I think that's the place I wanted to be in that book. And to make that work I had to many pages was necessary to to kind of work with that.
Yeah.
¶ The Appeal of Unlikable Characters
Well, let's talk a bit more about Christian. So the jacket copy says, meet Christian, is it Haderland? Yeah. You'll hate him. Yeah. Which is... a great, great hook. How much fun did you have making creating such an unlikable
Uh it was fun the part where he can do things. That I wouldn't have done, but might have thought I would love to do that, you know?
I was gonna ask how much do you put of yourself in d like the worst bits of yourself into the characters?
Yeah, no very yeah, very much so. Uh yeah. That's the fun part. Also, you know, yeah, you could just, people are annoying, you could just, you know. Which I never do in in real life. But I did it in that book. But it the the hard part of it is of course also that um could be um very unpleasant if you see you writing about someone no one has told me to write about him it's my own choice and why why do I go there and how come it's so easy for me to to m to make him like this, you know?
Yeah. Was it easy for you to make him like that?
Yeah, it was and and I think The thing with um not having empathy is Well it's terrible for everyone around here. You have total freedom. You can do whatever you want, you know, because you don't care about the consequences. You can care about yourself and your art. So it's a space there, that's uh I think it's very interesting. I think many artists uh and writers would you know, everyone has.
Yes, of course has this in them, but maybe more in that world. And also what I wanted to to write about is is some artists, if you get at a certain level You can actually do what you want and people will just say, Oh, you're great and Oh, this is so good and you know, you got an entourage with people around you and and that's a phenomenon in the world and it it is. I've seen it myself, I know I know how it is.
But since this is in the art world, I'm inventing pieces of art that doesn't exist. That was fun.
And she said,
D is Christian Haaland, is that? And she pointed at a particular person because he's a really arsehole, is it him? You know. But it wasn't. It was just um
Artistic monsters.
Yeah.
How did you decide like sort of which moment quite big moments, but also the I guess again the minutia, which would reveal Christians sort of cold nature. Kind of incrementally at the beginning. Yeah.
No, that's just by following him and and into situations and It's like I have kind of a method writing, you know. And when I do that I am there and and I am him, you know.
And
Yeah. Like I think what would he do now? But I don't know when I'm him.
So so there's a moment where um the barkeep pulls him his usual Yeah his fa like sees him coming, he's like, I got you, I got you ready and just despite him he orders something different.
Ja, das ist...
Which is a real dick move.
Yeah. Yeah well that's that was just you know that was I was writing about that and I was
Yeah.
what I decided to do there.
Yeah. I loved it'cause you I think a British person might be just like, I'll take it
Well I would have taken it.
Okay, yeah. The average person would take
Um yeah, and maybe that's why I'm going into this also because I avoid conflicts, you know, I can't I I really Yeah.
So it must have been really fun writing multiple conflicts, even the smaller ones.
Yeah.
¶ Faustian Themes and the Nature of Evil
Love that. You so you mentioned um Marlowe and uh Dr. Faustus is a really strong presence throughout the novel. They discuss it. Vivian, one of the characters, has a production of it. What is it do you think about the'cause I know that you've talked in the past about the devil and um there are not really overt references, but there are definitely references to the plot of Faustus in the plotting of this book. So why why Faustus I know you kinda talked about why Marlowe, but why Faus?
in the fall of Lucifer in the b he's an angel and he's, you know, starts to think that he's better than God even and And he's just thrown downstairs of fall and it's it's like a star on the sky you could see fall and that's That's the devil coming down here. And there's so many things connected to it. So death, for instance, is connected to to the devil almost like some places in some versions that he almost introduced death. There were no death before the devil.
But there is something that connects to the devil which is like, you know, it's blood, it's sin, it's sex, it's dirt, it's it's down there, you know. In that thing and then you get all the other stuff in it's very concrete in a way. and f fleshy and then you got all the other things in our culture at the moment which is you know, it's more more abstract. You got images, so the physicality of the world is
we're moving away from it. Uh and we're also moving away from nature in many ways. So that was kind of the core thing I wanted to write about in in these books. And you also got them the Gnostic myth about God really being the devil. The Christian God is the devil, which I love the thought of. It c turns everything upside down, right? And so the devil is very close here in in the starting point of this series really. And then um uh I wrote Morningstar.
There is a crime, there is three people who is um uh killed and tortured and mmutilised, do you say that? It's this is terrible yeah, mutilated. And their heads are turned around so they have their nose backwards and and they're yeah. So this is a terrible thing. And then in the third book.
And I just wrote that, you know, uh I didn't plan anything, it was just medic real crimes. This is how it looks. And then in the third book I have a private detective. Mm-hmm. It's incredibly fun to write about private detectives. But he had to investigate this crime scene and I didn't know what happened. I just met a crime scene. Um there is some sort of devilish thing here. There is a there is a devil symbol or something.
So he reads and I read an Ur Faust, which is the first folk tale of Faust and in the end, you know, the way the devil kill is by turning the head around so nos and I didn't know that.
Wow.
And I must have known it subconsciously or whatever. But that was a connection to Faust. And then I okay, I need to follow Faust. But I don't want Goethe's Faust, that's then Marlow. And then Marlow has this. fantastic, you know, life and you know so little about him, but you know his life was incredibly violent. And here was uh ymwneud â'r enghraifft, a'r enghraifft, a'r enghraifft, a'r enghraifft.
And he's the same age exactly as Shakespeare. Yeah. And they were in the same room. And and Marlowe was when they met, he was the superior one, you know, he was the talent and uh and the guy. Yeah. And uh then he was killed in Deadford.
Over a bill.
Shakespeare. Yeah, over Billy. And Shakespeare has the scene. Becomes the greatest writer the world has ever seen, you know? And that's such a good story. And that's not then hardly mentioned in the book, but it's I feel like um it's in the background there and it's Yeah. It it has something to do with what I'm doing with with the Christian and all of that.
¶ The Allure of Destructive Desires
Yeah.
So that was a very long
answer. I loved that that was such a brilliant answer. And also just while you were talking about that, it made me think about the things that because obviously the devil, there is something innately attractive about the devil. Yeah. And it's like the characters in The school of night are drawn to people that aren't necessarily good for them. Yeah. Christian and Hans and the women who find Christian attractive.
Yeah.
So what interests you about that exploration of why we are drawn to things which are so you know Clearly not.
That's good. That is actually very... Very uh difficult question of course. I mean with him it's it's i it's like an easy thing because he does what he wants to do. And I can't do that. you know, a child, little child will do whatever he he wants, you know. But there is so many other things that are w you know, uh at work here and being a human being is about, you know, learning learning all of those things.
And who are we for, you know, are we for ourselves or are we for you know, others or or you know, so But it will always be in all literature since you know, the beginning of literature has dealt with this you have an immediate urge, the t temptation, you know, just to to follow your instincts or to follow your desire or whatever. And um yeah, we can do that. Uh there is something other things to Take into consideration.
uh and that's a conflict and it will always be a conflict and it is you know it's um if you get angry you don't kill the person you're angry at, you know. But you might feel like you want to do it. But Kristen is is a is a person who Doesn't really need to do right, really. He doesn't need to care about uh he doesn't care about other people then he's in a way freer but You know. Would we have a society where we can do what we want? No. Would be it would be hell.
Ha ha.
Yeah, I think so
A society filled with devils.
Yeah.
¶ Photography, Art Criticism, and Devil Imagery
Because you you used to be a critic, is that right? Of literature? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there are these elements of criticism, art criticism that comes through in the people that Christian is talking to, showing his photography. Yeah. So how much of that was sort of harking back to I don't know, a an interpretation of art that you used to work in.
Photography was it was is very specific. Because the very first photography of people is Dagarre. It's like I don't know when it's like eighteen something. It's a street in Paris this morning. And there's no people there because um the exposure time is so long that all the movement disappears. And then but there is one person, you know, it's like black, tall, just standing there.
You can see him and it's so scary. It's like who is that? And I know people who've seen it instantly think that's the devil, you know. Yeah. The devil is kind of out of our time so it doesn't affect him the exposure time. Uh and I've written about that. I've written about that. And that's uh a photo in the book also. So if this is the first photography, first real photography and the devil is kind of there.
So I need needed to make Christian a photographer because he's also kind of close to the devil somehow. And I think it's interesting. 'Cause w something changed our culture. It's the photography. Because it's the first time the past have could been captured, the moment could have been captured. And that changed, you know, the concept of almost of our being and of uh of a culture. You could see people who are dead, you know. You could see coup generations back and
And if I didn't know anything about Ulla I would find that very scary, isn't that? It's spooky. No, w that's dominating completely our culture. It's a visual culture based on based on that fact. So it's all part of the But I'm trying to find out in, you know,
Yeah. maybe deliberate's not quite the right word, but you know, when I was reading'cause you're referencing real life pieces like this photo, um but I immediately went to go and Google it'cause I didn't know it, go and Google it and have a look and
see the kind of visual of what you are yeah talking about. So yeah, how how much of these references would you like to encourage your reader to kind of, if they don't know, to kind of stop, put down the book, go and have a look, come back to the book.
¶ Music as a Creative Catalyst
Oh yeah, no, I think you should just read the book and
No.
No no and if you remember something then you can maybe check it, then it maybe it was important. But if not it's just a part of the flow.
Yeah.
But if you're interested, I mean I do that all the time. Google stuff and I read stuff.
Yeah. So I well I was underground I think, so I was like I made a note when I got over ground.
yeah
To look it up. And it was really interesting. And then it added in this whole new dimension. Yeah. Felt like I was in one of your one of the art classes at the
Yeah.
Exactly. Christian is in which is quite nice. Um, when you're working, do you listen to music? Yeah. Do you okay, so what were you you were talking about the sort of eighties British post punk scene. So what were you listening to when you were writing this?
I started to review albums when I was 16 in the local newspaper.
Oh, did you?
So I I got an incredibly then I've sold it now a big kollection of albums and I read when I was från very young age because min brother started maybe an attempt to read anime and sounds and brittish music and in this book I you know I picked up those bands and I start to listen to them again. Some of them were still great. Some of them were really crap. But at the moment, there was a hype involved. But it was great fun. So I had to listen to them. You know, for kind of research purposes.
But some of those banners still have, you know. Yeah. But I also always have music on when I'm writing. Mm-hmm. Because it's creates um creates a space and I'm familiar with that space so I can relax in it and feel at home and then I can do you know uh transgression in the writing because I'm safe, I'm I'm here and and also if you have the same music
Every time you do the same thing, you associate the music with what you're doing. Mm. So if I play so for some novels I played only one record throughout writing of novel and that we're talking about a year, you know, same record. And when I put on that record You know, I w I know where I am and I can start to write immediately because it's kind of um almost a Pavlov reflex. But I have to kind of have brand new music.
I was just gonna ask so it always has to be familiar.
Because then I start to listen to it and then I can't do anything else.
I was listening to um Wolf Alice while I was reading this and they've got a song Thorns and as I was sort of getting to a point I think where Christian's father He overhears him calling him a narcissist. And there there's a line in Thorns th where she's singing, Maybe I'm a narcissist. Yeah. And I was like, uh, that's so weird. Yeah And then Morph Alice became the soundtrack too. And I could only listen to that album while I was reading your book. Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Right. Music. How how true to life was that debate? Is that a debate that you've had yourself? It felt like a very real debate.
Yeah, it is uh it is kind of but not Very serious, but yeah.
Yeah.
I came moved to Sweden in like two thousand and one or something and I was I was shocked because The music was so good. I mean it's a good music in every genre, you know. Never uh didn't know that.
Yeah.
And I listened a lot to Swedish music then. So I have to admit they've uh m much more advanced. But getting there in Norway too. Yeah. But some of the post punk bands in Norway were actually great. Completely But they did completely their own thing and really minor stuff. Mm-hmm. Still good.
¶ Subconscious Influences and Finishing Books
So would you encourage your reader w to make a note and then once they've finished your novel then go and listen to the bands that you reference? Yeah. Um, you've cited so many influences. John Fossey is one. Who else sort of continues to influence your writing, do you think?
Hmm. That is I I guess almost impossible to uh reply to because I never know what's gonna influence I know what I like to read and it may may go like this, I read a book. I've done this, I've I've read a book, made a huge impression. And kind of forget about it and and then two years later I write a book. Mm-hmm. I have no idea. I'm just writing, you know. And then two years later I can see, Oh, I took that from that and this from that.
So it's like everything is just going in and disappearing for me. And then when I write it somehow comes up a bit um camouflaged and a different shape and but it's come from somewhere. If I start to look at what are they really doing here, then I'm lost and I can't read. I have to kind of just disappear into... So I can't learn writing from looking, but I do subconsciously I think. And I can't tell what's what really.
Um what is next for you then? So you've got another couple of books in this series.
Yeah, so the the one um the next one is uh it's already translated but I think it will come out next year.
Okay.
And then yesterday actually I finished uh the next book in original
Congratulations.
Thank you. And it was sent to print. Yeah, it was sent to print yesterday, and I work. With it like the day before it was sent in.
Wow.
It's been incredibly stressful. It's like a summer from uh yeah. But it uh yeah, it went well. Because if you have one book each year the deadline could be incredibly tight. So if there is an essay I have to write I lost a month and then We'll have to speed it up. So I know half this book is written almost since August.
Oh you wrote half a book. Finns all good.
Yeah, because I had to speed speed it up.
Just for listeners, we're recording this at the very beginning of October. Yeah. So that's you wrote it in a month. That's incredible. What does finishing a book look like to you? Do you have a routine? Do you have a celebration?
Ja, nu, jag sa att det var sant. Yesterday. Ja. Yesterday I felt like there was someone missing, something missing. It can hold on to something. It's always there, you can always go and hold on to it. Yeah. And that was gone.
Yeah.
what what I'm gonna do. But today I've b been very happy and kind of liberated and I you know, I can do what I want and
The first thing you did was come and speak to me. Yeah.
I don't want to do that. So it's uh but this is not work for me, you know work is is very different. This is yeah come and talk to people that's
That's nice. Yeah.
But then I since the next deadline would be the next September I have to start working on that soon.
But you can have a few drinks in between now and then, surely.
Yeah.
A few red stripes, just for Christian.
Yeah.
The School of Night and all of Carlover's other titles are available now from wherever you get your books. Carlova, thank you so much for joining us.
A really wonderful chat. Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
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¶ Publishing Insights and Author's Reading Habits
So, as well as our author interviews, we love our listeners to leave with plenty of book recommendations. So, each episode, we put your questions to our guests. So joining me and Carl over to help answer some of those questions is publishing director Jane Lawson. Jane, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. So let's start with you telling us a little bit more about what being a publishing director in
Well, as I was just telling our friends before I came on air, I have been at Penguin for thirty years. So I celebrated my thirtieth birthday in July. So I've had thirty years to decide what being a publishing director means. And um if I say so myself, I think um I have one of the best jobs in the publishing because publishing directors get to meet writers and work with writers and shape their work. And we sort of curate what our listeners read in some senses.
again that's changing'cause we're listening to what our readers want and then we go out and say, Oh, our readers, there's an audience for this. Let's go and find those books. So my job is to find books for readers out there. That's in the very general Wide set.
Yeah. Uh we've got so many listener questions um for you this week. So we better get started, to be honest. We've got a lot to get through. One person has asked, um, they love to know what you're currently reading and what inspired you to read it.
Yeah, that is um A nice question to get the thing. With me is that I do read for what I'm writing. All the time. Så, just 2 weeks ago, I had to give a lecture on Rilke. He's 150 years this year in Ibsen, Prague. So I had to go back to my Rilke period and and read him, uh which was incredibly nice, especially his poetry. Uh this weekend I had to go to uh Vinya.
in Norway where um Tyre VSos he's a Norwegian writer he's one of my favourite writers he died in seventy which is really great and I have to give uh VSOs lecture it's called And then I went back and read some books I hadn't read before. you know, they were both really one of them especially was absolutely fantastic. And I still have that feeling that novel gave me. It's called The Tower. It it was, yeah, it was great. But other than that, my the last
by David Shaloy. So good. Which I really loved. Yeah. Because i if you're a writer at least you know how hard it is to hold back. Mm, you know? And he's holding back all the way through. It it's so it was so good and interesting.
Yeah, and delicate.
Yeah. And I mean the hardest thing to write about in the world is sex obviously. And he does it like nothing it's just a part of the book and it's part of the character and it's like This it feels like it's just flowing yeah the following is life, you know. And and I think it is best things I've read for a very long time.
Yeah.
Um and I'm not jealous because he's such a different writer for for me. Other than that is very often I get jealous of very good books. But these books felt like I could never have done this. Never in a million years I could have done this book. Yeah. So I can just enjoy it.
Yeah.
¶ Jane's Global Book Recommendations
Um I'm reading Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. Oh because I'm also uh not only in Japanese fiction but Korean fiction and I've also bought Taiwanese fiction. I'm just very interested in that whole um landscape. Bora Chung, I happened to meet the translator last week, Anton Hur, who's a huge ambassador in this space. And I thought I really need to read the book that was shortlisted for the Booker International.
And it's so beautifully packaged and well published by Honford Star. So that's what I'm reading. It's very odd and disturbing in a good impactful way.
That sounds cool. I like that. Disturbing. Um, okay. This is one asking what book would you recommend to the younger generation as the best novel ever? That's from Madeline.
Yeah. So um the best book for me when I grew up. I read it when I was ten. I reread it when I was twelve, well I'm fourteen and sixteen. And I actually also reread it when I was an adult. Um
I'm on tender hurt.
Yeah, no, it's it's it w I think it actually works on all levels. Worked for a ten year old, worked for me, and that's uh Ursula K. Lequin's uh The Wizard of Earth Sea and it's got such a basic plott that finns också det profund och du. Och jag tänkt med såhing dypp när jag rädde bok. Jag måste ha bli twelv. Jag kan inte bli ten. Jag var twelv.
Yeah. The best novel ever in my view, um, in my experience. Or one of the best novels ever. is a book called The Light Between Oceans, which we published fifteen years ago and is a really Big story, big themes, terrific characters, fabulous setting. a book that makes you think and you have a little bit of a cry, but it it changes you.
Mm.
Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd
Changes you for the better? Or just changing?
So for it makes you think more about big themes, what we're doing here on on this planet and
Existentially.
Yeah, it's existential in a very accessible way.
Um this is for you, Karlover. What is your favourite Norwegian book that's been translated to English that everyone should read?
Uh the birds by Tyre Vessas. The writer I mentioned is his best book.
Okay.
Absolutely a fantastic novel.
This one's for you, Jane. What Korean writers should be?
from Bora Chung. Um well I have, as you asked, a book coming up, a couple of books coming up, probably about three or four. But the one we recently published is called A Thousand Blues. by Shinran and she writes about this is a narrated by a nar by a robot. Oh. So it's of Clara and the Son meets convenience store women. So it is is is about two sisters who rescue a robot
Together, they save a racehorse. So that mounts like a little bit particular, but actually it's a family story narrated by a robot with animal justice, climate justice, and sort of anti-productivity messages. So it was huge in career.
Um okay, so literature and translation is booming as we talked about. But are there any non English books that you're enjoying or international authors that you are just completely obsessed with?
There are many, many uh international authors, thanks to the International Booker Prize. I think many, many people are reading in translation. Well, I'll always recommend Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.
So is that the first is that sort of would you recommend that to be s your sort of gateway if you've not
read very good. That is a good way of saying expressing it. I I would say sort of gateway into this kind of translation fiction is probably healing. Because people will pick that up for comfort and cafes and cats and then they will go, Oh, but this whole world of Japanese fiction and there's um gateway fiction into translation is probably healing.
Okay, nice.
There's lots of South American writers that are really good
Yeah.
At the moment's like a second boom. And I read the Marina uh Enriquez, Our Share of Tonight. But it's an uh kind of an occult. novel. It's really dark. It's great because it is gothic and it is you know has some sort of not exactly fantasy element but part a little bit of that. And then it's all connected to Argentinas
Past indigenous history, people disappearing, people getting killed, kinda terror regime. It's all there, but kind of transformed into this darkness that goes in and out there. It's uh I think it was brilliant.
¶ The Crucial Role of Literary Translators
And also how do you match books?
And all those withered.
Different translators.
So the translators cause I was recently back from Korea where I met so many incredible translators. They are a really wonderful, hardworking community. So when something comes to me in translation from a Korean agent or Japanese agent or any European agent, there's often a translator already attached. Often because that translator could have been the one that spotted the book in the first place. So um it often that translator often comes already matched.
Sometimes when there are some really, really kind of prize winning translators, and there are many, a publisher might say, Well, I want this prize-winning translator on this work. For example, Polly Barton, who translated Butter so brilliantly. But in general I really am very happy with the translators that come match'cause they they're already invested in the book.
I feel like maybe we need to just go back for a minute and can you just sort of tell us the process of translating and why it's so important and, you know, perhaps sort of like the distinctions You know, why would one translator do it in a different way to another?
Yeah, so that's really interesting. So I could sort of cycle back a bit to the story around the vegetarian, Hang Kang. because that really kind of brought the work of translation into the kind of mainstream. Mm. And obviously Deborah Smith was then written about in the New Yorker and various places about how much work she did to that
to the original Korean. And it was totally author approved. Right. And they work very very closely hand in hand. But people went down a rabbit hole and said, Oh, she translated this line like this and actually it's in Korean it says this and that then created opened up a conversation about the originalists, i.e. translating exactly what you say word for word and the activists, which are those who listen to the second language, the secondary language, and think how will that land
most impactfully. Yeah. And um not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but now that you've asked me this I can't resist is that Korean is you know, the three kind of characteristics and this has been written about in a New Yorker are Plain prose, ambiguity and pattern repetition. Okay.
Yeah.
and in English The obviously uh arguably, but this is what I've read and I agree, the three features are lyricism, concision and precision.
So when you are transferring, you know, one language with those characteristics into such a different mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd mae angen i mewn gwirionedd, mae angen i mewn gwirionedd
Really that is really important. So Deborah Smith is a huge you know, she's done a huge amount for the translation community.
Is it only sort of not now, but is it only in like sort of more recent years that we are really recognising the work of translators? Or do you think people who it sort of feels like people who are in the know always knew, but now it just feels like the wider
Yes, because they are ambassadors and they have their following and people are recognising how uh well, I uh the international booker actually I think weights the prize reward equally, translator and writer. So and this area of the m you know, this young our young area of the market, they they want to sing the praises of translators and um they often do a lot of the publicity.
So I know that there is a kind of discussion about whether you put the translator's name on the cover. Yes, I've got to go. And that's a big yes.
That's a big yes.
And also because the readership themselves, they they appreciate the work of translators. They want to see the translator's name on the cover. So there are occasions when a publisher might
Say oh do we really need to are there a lot of names on the cover? And this is not my area, I don't publish um thrillers, but I I would say that if you were going to publish If you're going to distribute and stock a book in a supermarket where people are just going for a thriller and then they go, oh, translated by they might not want to that might put them off.
Right.
It might, but it might not. And I think in general publishers think at a very commercial space it might actually put them off if you put another name that they don't recognise on their beloved thriller.
I see
That's not really our space. We're space where we where we really champion the translators and put their name nice and
I'm so glad we've had you on, Jane,'cause this is a subject that I've been kind of really interested in and feel like I've never quite got to the bottom of and I feel like you've really answered so many of my burning questions. So thank you for joining us.
Thank you everyone for those brilliant questions that you sent in, and again thank you very much to Carlo van Nasgard as well as Jane Lawson. I hope everybody is leaving this episode with some new reading recommendations. I certainly am. Links and information on all of the books. about today are available in the show notes. Thank you very very much for listening.
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