Why are generations at war with each other? With Zadie Smith

penguin the podcast I'm Rihanna Dillon, and this week I'm in conversation with an author. Yeah. She's been twice named among Grantor's best young British novelists. Her debut, White Teeth, blazed onto the bestseller lists and established her as a defining generational voice 25 years ago. Her follow up work includes the critically and commercially acclaimed NW on Beauty and Swing.

Zadie Smith's latest work is Dead and Alive, the keenly awaited new collection of essays in which she brings her unique skills and observations to bear across a dazzling range of From a close look at artists Toyin OG Oditola, Carl Walker, and Celia Paul to a trip to the movies to see and to think about Cape Blanchett's tar, or to Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage to witness the ascendance of Storm Z.

From the countryside to the city, we're taken on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved northwest London and invited to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amos, Hilary Mantell, Philip Roth, and Tony Morrison. Zadie Smith, welcome to Ask Penguin. We're really, really delighted to have you here. Thanks for coming on.

So I've already given a a kind of brief overview of some of the subjects that your essays touch on. It's so wide ranging, which is what's so gorgeous about it. And it gives the reader like a real sense that you are curious about absolutely everything and anything. Is that how you feel as you go through the world? Do you feel as though

I don't know. I'm just... me. So it's it feels normal to me to be interested in you know, stuff. I am interested in stuff but I don't think to an unusual amount. I don't think of myself as a connoisseur or anything like that. I just You know, like books, like movies, like music, like everybody. Yeah. You have written a lot of essays over the years but you never set out to be an essayist. So how did that come about? Has it sort of taken you by surprise that you

It was just a job, you know, like I was writing novels and then I was kind of flattered when somebody asked me to review something. You know, I was so green and I didn't expect anybody to be interested in my Views on anything? So is that how you think of it as as reviews primarily, how it began? Um, I don't know. I it's hard for me to talk about it. I don't really bring it to mind very often, you know? I just sit at my desk and I do what's in front of me. If I think about it too much

I get, you know, really self conscious. So publication is hard for me, this whole period is hard for me because I've just always rather kind of be writing. Right. Um I think I realised as I was as I started that um you know there's a lot of different kinds of writers like you just had Carl Overley in here. He's another one, like he likes to

think about things. Like there's lots of different kinds of novelists and he's got a kind of um I would say a slightly philosophical bent and sometimes a novel won't contain the things you wanna think about. I love his essays, but I I think his essays come out of a very pure place. He just wants to think at length. And um I guess I do that under the guise of, you know, you want five thousand words or something.

Right. I really like your introduction because you're sort of trying to ease the reader in who might not necessarily be a nonfic reader. So tell us about And why? I just I really feel that there's no idea that's so complicated you can't find you know, open and kind of shared language to And that's always what I'm trying to do'cause I'm always thinking about, you know,

the kind of people I come from, the kind of background I come from. So I just wanted it to be open. You know, it gets complicated. Like writing is not like You know, I always envy musicians like you don't need a certain level of educational comprehension to understand even the greatest music

that has ever been made, classical or rap or pop or whatever it is. The kind of door is wide open. Obviously writing isn't quite like that, right? At the very minimum you need to be able to read. And then there are layers of complexity of uh levels of reading and of course I'm aware of that, but I still think uh just as a principle of like democratic access that you should try and make a sentence, you know, as open as possible. That's what I try to do. I don't always succeed, you know.

I guess each subgenre of writing has its own Do you think there are issues around the world? Um, I don't know. People seem to be reading a lot of essays these days. Online all they do is read essays. So I think maybe that that idea of it as an academic matter has Mm. You have to bring quite a lot to fiction, you know, this energy for this imagined world, whereas essays don't ask you to do that for the most part. So I I think it's the other way around.

I kind of really love how you encourage I mean you don't have to read the book at all, sorry Penguin, but if you do read it. You don't have to read it in any particular like I really do always want readers to feel as free as possible. Yeah. Right.

But then you also I guess by putting it together you have to shape it in some way. So you've kind of grouped them in five sections. The umbrella terms, how you came up with those? You know, I'm quite a simple writer, I just say what I see and just saw a section of things that seemed to me Others are about thinking. ideas, some people want to know about your life, the life And also just for me as a way of I never planned. अगी नफ गॉट Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then he kind of persists a little bit.

But then the condition of course is that you can't just publish old essays. or seven or ten more and I usually really don't want to do that. But then once I get started you add start to bring a shape to the book as a whole. And also, you know, usually when I'm writing the book somebody set me a new Again, Just a kind of I follow my gut really. But mine are really Yeah. As one about community in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really affectionate and gorgeous. So how

It's two things for me, it's community for sure. That word is overused everywhere. Yeah. Um but also like privacy. to be amongst people and and in relation to other people but they also need privacy. So for me I feel I can credit Aware I like that. And that you go back to your own self? Likewise when I'm not in a podcast to my life. It's the craziest thing but th this audiobook studio happens to literally be Yeah. I would say it's about five and a half seconds from my front door. Ha ha. Yeah.

So it's incredibly convenient for me. I don't know how it is for all the other writers in the world but um It was weirder than that. I grew up in the flat We got to But from from the podcast window I could see my old flat. I can see the communal space. I mean, not anymore. I'm you know, there's a I don't know. I guess that's where I feel like I'm not sure.

No, but I wanna be on their side and I wanna kind of make space for the Generous to them. I don't enjoy that. As you said, th some of these essays are from the past. Yeah. So returning to them were I think when you're writing them you're in a heightened state, you know. There's a gap between Yeah. Good thought or whatever. Yeah. But it feels quite distant sometimes. It depends.

And one of the things that writing is always for is to contain a feeling, you know. You get I my main feeling like reading it out loud, I I rarely read Which is about As good as it gets my end. I was like, Okay. Yeah. I don't reread my thing. off yeah I m I um I had to read The Fraud as an audiobook.

Really, it was a struggle. But um most writers don't reread their work generally. I'm not unusual in that. Like there's just no time and why would you? And there's always something else to do. Um so an audiobook is like a rare No, I I don't know how many people writers or not. Think anybody would be that charmed by doing that. But I was proud, you know, I was proud of some of the essays were hard to write. And it was really good. Yes.

That's what interested me. The reactions to it and everybody's mania around it, that's always what interests me more than the thing in itself. interested me certain structures of discourse interested me People who have completely different contingents. you are fighting people you're about to become tomorrow. Literally makes no sense. Yeah. And that's what kinda made me laugh is that the idea

that this age discourse is so violent. Like what do you imagine is about to happen to you? Yeah. And wouldn't you allow a discourse that allowed for the fact that you too genuinely faster than you can imagine. Are gonna be forty, then fifty, then sixty, then seventy. Wouldn't you like to make a landscape that allowed for your own existence? That's what made me laugh more than anything. It's just such a crazy

Structural error. Like it's you are gonna become this person. You also were this person. So some sympathy and compassion on both sides. Oh it happens every single time. It you can find more humour in it. Like I remember For my generation we had the people of the Who were genuinely intolerable going on about their wonderful youth and and their free love and the amazing music and you wanted to kill them. But I also remember simultaneously, secretly, you were jealous. I remember

I was jealous. I didn't want to hear about Woodstock and John Lennon and Jimmy Hendry. I didn't want to hear it. But at the same time, in the privacy of my own life, I would listen to it and I but I didn't want to hear my parents talk about it. I didn't want to hear anybody It's a double movement always. It's always love and hate and it's normal.

Yes, and now it's nineties nostalgia and actually I I'm from the nineties and I uh nineties nostalgia drives me up the bend as well. It's just what people do. Yeah. And it's it's fine.

No, I think it's exactly the same. They just have a different medium in which to experience the other. It takes us a long time to actually of a millennial about the kind of behaviour modifying structures that we're all in. I wouldn't put it on teenagers. I've seen grandma It's a really weird role that you all have written in the world. You're being spoken to as if you know things. And I don't feel that way. I don't I don't f I don't have that experience.

filled adolescent. I think a lot of um the thing which is maybe unsaid by a lot of writers but seems to me true is that particularly if you publish young and you stay writing, it's a very childish occupation. And a lot of things that Real adults have to deal with primarily colleagues and a workplace everyone. The main tray I noticed. To be honest. I don't dislike it. I love writers. They're m some of my favourite people, but I would be wary of uh

There's something other than that. I think their teenager lives are very, very strong in them, particularly novelists. I'm not talking about like serious And science and that's a different matter. But the what we're talking about is a very particular I mean you talk about um you write about Storm Z or King Michael as you call it.

I just think what they do is much it's the same but it's more intense and it's more direct and When people die at their funerals they're not really It's what people actually feel in their That's just how I feel about music. There's a rapper from my neighbourhood that he's worked with called Who's from the other bit of Kilburn for the And if you listen to like one Nux album, that's like eight novels. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know why maybe it's So I find music very affecting and I love to write about musicians I don't man because of copyright. Like when I first started writing White Teeth, it was full of hip hop lyrics and then Penguin said to me, How'd you like to pay two hundred grand for these hip hop lyrics? And I was like, No. I've made the mistake a few times, like and on Beauty I left lyrics in and it cost me a lot of money.

with some Nas lyrics. So I don't do it anymore. It's it's a real tragedy actually. It would be lovely.

Not when I'm writing, never, I just listen to brown noise but I need music in my It's a mixture my reading is a mixture of a lot of debut writers, I guess. It just anything. Uh anything that comes through the door, anything that right now I'm reading an I Icelandic. Epic which by the guy who won the Nobel Prize in the thirties. I've just never read it before. Haldor Laxnus is his name. It just has to be good. Try to stay as open.

My tastes are are they just depends. The different people I rely on for Like I have people who are really good at recognition. No, West African literature. I have people I know who know all about Japanese writing, it's that kind of thing. I know who Yeah. Um That's not me, that's You know, a lot of it is if we're honest, like Phones I I write. personal experience of escapism. Like I understand

I wanna look at a book twelve as a day and it's not that different. So a lot of it's escapism, but it's also a quiet like today You know you always have the choice. I think I think. Uh I just find my brain is calmer. And I go into the world with a different attitude and attention. Insight it makes me think in a different way. All the books I read. It's just a different kind of news. Very good. About the lives of some of the poorest people. It's unexpected.

I could listen to that news on the World Service, I suppose. But I had it from the inside. I had it in this novelistic form and you know, it's what I always say, it's not it's not like some magic pill like I empathise with Cece in this book and I suddenly rush to hate. Everybody knows fiction doesn't work that way. I read this book and some part of me next time i is open.

My eyes, my ears, my heart, I'm I'm like hearing it. I'm not hearing just oh this is happening in Haiti. I know something And even if it's only fictional or virtual or it means To me, that's what Can do. I don't I don't experience that confidence as a writer. I never sit down thinking, Oh, here I am opening up the world. That doesn't happen. But as a reader, I feel it all the time. With all kinds of books for all kinds of things.

I mean it's more like self disgusting. I there's a book just came through my door this morning And on the second page you Yeah. Like who are you to sit and bam? And then hear on a podcast more of it and you know, it's not maybe when you're young and you're twenty four it seems really exciting. Talk about yourself with strangers. But over time it it really is not something that's not a little bit of a little bit And I think if that can expand to

You know, the very idea of writing a book. Like the bottom line is who cares? Why should anybody care what you have to say? That is a hard thought to compulsion in me to write I realise now at this late stage so all I can do is just keep If it Don't do it. Don't tell Benquin. They might hear it. I just don't do it. It's essentially the truth. But um I I don't know. I I think as I've got older I um I am I'm more anxious think when you're young you think writing is going to solve something

It just doesn't do that. But then all kinds of artists I talked to like I saw Little Sims recently It's not for you. And that's how it is. It's like it's not gonna s cure you of anything. Yeah. But as a reader you know that it It does sometimes it's good for readers. Like I I know as a reader that Oh okay.

Um I mean I think you'd be a very strange human if you called her and you didn't get slightly more pessimistic given what's heading to you. You know, at the speed of not of course the time Yeah. Listening to Tanahease recently on a Ezra Klein's podcast and he makes the point that they're actually not as dark as they can be, that dark times are a continual matter in America, particularly

On the arc of things, this is very bad but but it can get worse. So th there is that I don't know. I mean Optimistic it's definitely funny. feel kind of lost from funniness. Things still amuse me all It's hard sometimes to convince yourself that there's any point in such Thank you for brightening my day in some form or reminding me. a one-way journey for me, but certainly in the essays, particularly writing about things like climate, like Yeah, I'm angry.

Yeah. And you have children and you're looking to the future. You know, there's nothing unusual about my feelings. All I'm trying to do is articulate them in a way that other people can use those words for something, you know, for their own incohate feelings. Um Yeah. Is that happening?

I mean it's gonna get extremely aging to have a book that's twenty five years old wandering around. Even my children are I don't know. I I was a child when I wrote it, so I it just feels like a weird thing that I mean the one difference I I it really did make which I think And I give them to my mum. Poor my poor mummy's drowning in them or or in the basement or any anyone who will take them usually. And then when it came out I thought, well

You know, because you spent twenty five years basically not looking up. That's kind of how I would describe Of this other book I had to write. Right. And not really, to be fair, nothing to do with penguin saying, Can I have another book? Just because in my mind there was almost preordained line of books that had to be written. So I just that was my job. But when this happened, I kind of stopped

What was that? As Lord says what was that? And I got a a copy of each book and I just put it by the wall in m near my desk. So now when I look to the side I can see these, you know, whatever they are, thirteen or fourteen. And it's okay, like it's quite a nice feeling. Like I guess I was always scared. Yeah. It's kinda nice.

White teeth is mostly ripped off from London Fields, isn't it? If you look at those texts closely, I'm sure... Um that there's a lot of London Fields. big messy novel about. I don't know, I you know I've been reading at that point I was studying, so there was a lot of Victorian novels, a lot of Beloved maybe. The ridiculous thing about being a writer is when you actually ask to recommend a book, it's as if no books exist in the history of the world. Never read one. Unbelievable to me.

Multi generational. But I do like I just read Chumamambuth which is a little bit of a little bit of a five women. But I I do love a large spread of a novel and I'm I'm quite I'm very cheered recently. Have you read the new That's also I mean it's just about two lovers really, but it's got this kind of Scope. Novella you can live in and spend it. Oh amazing. And I really miss those characters and living in that. It's nice if a novel is chic, great and it looks good with Sorry, do people do that?

Yeah, I think they do. But it's also nice when you're just completely immersed and you miss your stop. I always say the same I'm I just repeating myself. But there's a book called Hurricane which is by He's kind of a kid's writer but also an adult's writer who was And it's just about a hurricane is coming. They've been warned, the island has been warned. And it's just about the kind of lead up to the

I don't know if I'd seen a Jamaican hurricane at that point. I definitely saw them later but To my mother's island and and uh there's so much anticipation and so much, you know, kind of old fashioned novelistic Like this thing is about to happen and then So simple really. Absolutely. I remember thinking that Which I then do. Novels with almost no plot. They did not do that in any way. It feels like ten is such a like.

Yeah. As an adult writer I think sometimes you can wish you could go backwards and change some of your information. It's really interesting to me, like thinking about someone like Nalskard, I can see similarities in our work which are about a joint interest in certain things. Certain writers

Some existentialists and this and that. But then there are places I went to as a child he never would have read and there's books. So that's where these suddenly these other landscapes open up and it's just so interesting that In them, and when you meet other writers, you can see the little Venn diagram of where you meet, and then you can also see where you separate. Yeah, I mean, there were no... But I don't mean to say that I was deprived'cause I Yeah, it came from your mother.

The flat was kind of heaving. She knew like she knew Benjamin's F and I. People I didn't realise who they were until I was an adult. I guess I don't think of reading that way. Like I'm always glad, like when you said see yourself. 'Cause I don't think white readers move through the world thinking they see themselves in characters. I think there's a kind of narrow

for us. I was glad to know more about the diaspora because I come from it. But that's different from seeing myself. Like the characters in Zorg. life with a completely different history. So i in our house you know there's a load of Irish kids to um enter the world of literature as open as possible. Like I I was very aware In sometimes very inappropriate places. As the cliche goes.'Cause he said the same thing. He said this is all mine.

Cathedrals and whatever it is, if it's To pretend that this corner is yours and that I mean when I say I'm I've written four pages of it and I was late for this because I suddenly lost track of time, it never happens. So I've written four pages. So what can you tell us anything about it? Is there anything that

I am embarrassed sometimes to publish so much. I don't mean to. I I like to write. So it would be better if I just wrote and just kept it to mys kept it to myself and then published occasionally. Well, Dead and Alive and all of Zadie's other titles are available now from wherever you get your books. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.

So as well as our author interviews, one of our favourite bits of the podcast is answering our audiences' questions and requests, and regular listeners will know that we always spend some time thinking about books. We will send you away with a very long list of exciting new reads to discover. So joining me to help answer some of those questions are our penguin colleagues, Niall Fore Bryan and Kylie. Hi, welcome to Ask Penguin. Yeah.

Hi, it's really really lovely to meet you both. Thank you for coming on. Now before we get into the books themselves Yeah, so I'm a commissioning editor. Is already creative. Sounds so much fun. That I think is possibly the job that I'm most envious of here at Penguin. What about you, Noel? Am I gonna be envious of your job as well? I'm an audio editor and so I do the audio books for all of vintage and all of Pancraft. So I work with guys sometimes actually. قائلہ

Yeah, yeah, quite a lot. She's got great books. Yeah. Ha ha. So this involves casting the book, reading it, finding the right voice for it, and then spending some time in the studio, getting the tone right. Yeah, just finding the uh sound. We don't need to. Yeah. So obviously to listen to having an audiobook with a full cast is incredible, very exciting, very cool, I imagine hellish to put together.

It can be. It can be but it can also be a joy when people you know, you've got six people who all love the same thing. Yeah. Bringing their own perspective and their own take. Yeah, it can be joyous, but oh it's logistically. We don't yeah. Yeah. Good, very diplomatic answer. Um is there a book that you are really excited to see? Oh. Yeah. But uh The Yanis Varafakis raise your soul.

Um and it follows five women in his family, from his mother's grandmother's And their experience with imprisonment, uh, fascism in Greece in the uh early nineties and how that shaped him into the revolutionary, I mean, hardcore. And him telling you the story, oh it's beautiful. I thought I had enough of this period of history but him telling me was amazing. And it's all in Greece. So he talks about Athenians and Mount Olympus Oh wow. A mythological tale. It's brilliant. Yeah, can't wait.

Oh, I'm Good. Yeah. I haven't read it yet, but he to he came into the w one of the great things about working here. brilliant authors come in all the time and just turn up upstairs and we get to hear them talk to us. No, no, a couple of years ago when I first started he came in and spoke about this book. Same, same. The seed's the idea for it. I'm very important. And it stuck with you over those Yeah. Um Kaya. Yeah.

So many things. I feel like it'd be remiss to not mention Margaret Atwood's incredible Great. Women and remarkable remarkable. I love it. Margaret Atwood is not gonna be a hard sell. No. I don't think. Um okay, so we have some listener questions.

Our first one is a really easy one. What are you reading at the moment? Embark on big read. How come what's problem? like life altering for me. So I'm rereading Everything by Don Delillo. one of my favourite writers ever. I'm currently on Libra, which I think is his finest work actually. I think I used to prefer like Underworld perhaps about a decade ago. But so yeah, I'm reading a lot of um what I can Fantastic.

I think I'd be interested to see what someone, particularly someone like Delilo, who obviously was you know writing these amazing systems novels, like what would something like that look like? Order reinvention. That's a version of it. Has anything surprised you from the I don't need to. Yeah. No, what about you?

one I'm reading that I'm most enjoying is a reread of a book called The Fall of Light, which is book sixteen or seventeen in a series called Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is published by Transworth and it's like a high fantasy, completely original world. All right. started reading with my brother maybe ten years ago and I'm rereading book number sixteen or seventeen because the next one is about to come out after like a seven, eight year game.

It's probably the best book I've ever read. But I try not to mention it in polite conversation because people would have to read sixteen or seventeen books to get there. So it can't be read as a standalone. Abs absolutely not. Although You could read the book before and read that one and come away with something. Mm, but you've been missing out on a Yeah, a lot a lot of context. But uh just fabulous. Just oh I mean it's a great sell to say it's one of the best books that you've ever read. Also

sixteen books before I just could not at this point. I don't But but I would absolutely recommend everyone go and check out book one. Okay. Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Um, somebody said, I'm really interested in real life stories and on the lookout for memoirs. So, do you have any favourites that are like? And you can't have Margaret Aquit again because Yeah. Yeah, I do have a couple. I Dorjust Kids by Patty Smith. It's a really obvious choice, but I did think I'd mention it briefly. I think it's so beautiful. inside of you. But if we're talking about I guess life or perspective changing, I want to mention there's a Chinese writer and film Bye. Mm-hmm.

Spanning, growing up in extreme poverty in rural China, moving to the UK, grappling with language, with being an artist and a mother. Yeah. Adoptive nation, and so she's written this incredible trilogy, and she plays with language and form in such inventive ways, and she's also lived such I would high to anyone I was really blown away when I read her f first memoir, What's for a time in the East, like many years ago. That's a really cool. You, Nile?

I think I would uh recommend Hisham Matar's The Return. Not sad on a god. Six years ago and it came out. This changed my life and perspective and I remember Reading a particular passage about a Libyan poet that Hishemata's referring to. So the book is him going back to Libya for the first time to find out what the regime did with his father, which he already knows, but he needs someone to tell him and say the words. But they refuse.

But he talks about a Libyan poet from the early nineteen hundreds who's taken by the Italian and um composed a thirty stanza poem which he recited over and over and over again and this transferred through the walls and the prison gates to other prisoners who also began And he was uh then whipped many years later for inciting belief into the rebellion through those thirty stanzas of poetry. created in his presence. And this just to me

This is why why I do what I do. The power of words is is beyond, you know, anything that anyone Yeah, he's really great on words and why I need to be Yeah. Taken by you. Even though he knows this. This this changed my life. So you gotta say something. Everything he wrote. I'm believing. I couldn't believe what I was wrong. Really?

So this person has said, I'm currently reading books from writers of colour, so can you recommend any authors and books from writers of colour or from the Caribbean? The one I'd love to talk about a little bit is Passion Tide, which is by Manuk Rafi who wrote The Merm. couple of years before. But this is a most recent book from twenty twenty four. And it is about Trinidad and about femicide in Trinidad and about uh A Japanese steel pandler is killed at the beginning of the novel.

And by her death I'm starting to realize all my novels or books I'm choosing quite political. Anyway, a revolution begins and women from across Trinidad, there's sex workers. journalists, the wife of the president we get her perspective to, they start to come together to

protest, combat, um, bring eyes to this ongoing problem of femicide. But really what again I'm talking about audiobooks because I I love audiobooks. Is um what what really is in the book is that carnival eeriness because I guess it's all about murder and femicide and you hear the steel pans throughout the book as a kind of throughout the book and in the audio book there's uh original musical School. Incredible. Played by kids on the steel pants.

It really brings you to the place. But yeah, it just it made me feel like I I could be a revolutionary too. So ordinary people getting together Yeah. to happen, I don't know, but It is. Yeah. Okay, Kaya. Oh there's a couple. I love this question. Thank you to whoever asked it. Um I just wanted to mention this is a classic actually but like Invisible Man.

Yeah. Percival Everett, but some of his lesser known works.'Cause I've been a fan of him for ages and ages and You crossed that everyone's just jumped on the bandwagon with the last cover. So thrilled, he so deserves that recognition. But yeah, I'd really encourage people to go through his backlist um in particular but Partier which actually is concerned with some of the I'd say arguably some of the same things, and it's just so funny and so intelligent and yeah.

Yeah, I'm sure peop everyone's heard of him now, which is great, but I'd really recommend going through he's really That's a really great one, thank you. As we're in book award season, the book prize winner announcement is just around the corner. What is your favourite prize-winning book?

In terms of winning, I often love the ones that make the short list and don't win, but I'm going to mention them. I'm never going to go on a podcast or do anything without talking about Rachel Kushner. I'm so sorry. Sorry. Crazy.

Um no, well yes, but also The Mars Room. Um I think that is one of the best novels I've ever read and I think it really combines what um David Foster Wallace was talking about and he was lamenting a lack of um novels that both like challenge and entertain and move and provoke and I think that does all of those things um So much fun to read. Oh, yeah. Hopefully yeah, but I thought that was really phenomenal. Yeah. Agreed. I've been shoving flesh down people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, fingers crossed. I'm gonna have to say orbital because I've been a huge fan of Samantha Harvey. Mm-hmm. The shapeless unease, or even before that the western wind. But orbital is fabulous'cause number one, it's slim. And lots of my friends Yeah. Lots of my friends are not readers. Yeah. And lots of my friends are not interested in space and

looking at the world from an outside perspective literally. But this was very, very at least on the surface, accessible. But I mean if anyone's read Or Orbital, they'll know that once you open it Yeah, it's not a one it's not a one day book. You really gotta take your time with it. But I thought it was um

incredibly clever in its construction, beautiful in its reflection and also like tender with each of the astronauts on the uh on the space station. I loved it and I love her and I think everyone should read more of The wilderness is amazing. Yeah. Oh man. I read that race. I still will always be Sorry.

Have you read this? Have you read it? It's so easy. It's so easy to read. It's so short. Please read it. Um and our final question from the listeners is can you share some of your favourite books with autumn?

Oh I found this so tougher. about this because I I was wondering if this person wanted sort of cozy autumn reads and I was like I am such a not cozy person. I think my idea sort of my interpretation of autumn reads would be obviously campus novels have a kind of begin and fall a lot of the time or feature fall. So from the obvious one But also maybe um there's some kind of less One of my favourite novels ever is The Insangiaries.

Technically sort of a campus novel. I think she's one of the finest stylists of our time to be honest. So campus novels, obviously gothic classics are quite they're not sort of technically with an autumn setting, but they have that kind of Halloween. It's not so much the setting as the symbolism. कर दो कर दो Yeah, I struggled a a big time with this as well. And this is super roundabout, but you have to forgive me. Because it's all I've got. My favourite poet is John Key.

But my favourite John Keats poem is actually uh Hyperion and there is a book called Dan Simmons. Which is not set, you know. Right. And the second book is called The Fall of Hyperion, so you've got fall in there. Oh my god. You see what I'm saying? There's some connections I know. People know him for too autumn but Iberian is beautiful because this is getting roundabout. But it's like the Canterbury Tales in Space and there's a priest and there's Yeah. And as a poet.

There's a poet that is like a cyber uh facsimile of cute. Oh, I see. duology turns on the poem Hyperion, so it follows that line. And it's about the end of humans, as we know. So you could say the end of the summaries we know, which is kind of like Reaching. Yeah. I'm sort of lost but I love it. Yeah. I like artistic. license that you took with that question. Then I was thinking Drachia, you know. Oh that's what I have. I love Dracula.

Um thank you so much to everybody who submitted a question, and thank you very, very much to Zadie Smith, Niall Foro Bryan, and Kaya Shaw. Links and information on all of the books that we've talked about today are available. on the Penguin Podcast feed. Do subscribe so that you never