In Analogue Africa , (Verso) essayist and LRB contributing editor Jeremy Harding explores the anti-colonial imagination through the works of African artists and film-makers, including Seydou Keïta, Sanlé Sory, Ernest Cole, Sarah Maldoror, John Akomfrah, William Kentridge and Binyavanga Wainaina. ‘In Analogue Africa , [Harding] is writing at the peak of his powers’, writes Adam Shatz, ‘eloquent, perceptive, attentive at once to questions of form and to the moral and political stakes involved in t...
Jul 02, 2026•58 min
When a steamy Netflix show called ‘Cheating’ becomes the much-talked-about megahit of the moment, baby-boomer Kate is alarmed to find it contains secrets from her marriage to architect husband Jack that only she should know. John Lanchester, LRB contributing editor and author of The Debt to Pleasure and Capital , explores popular culture, the dynamics of marriage and intergenerational conflict in his latest novel Look What You Made Me Do (Faber). Lanchester was in conversation with Hattie Crisel...
Jun 27, 2026•1 hr 1 min
Rabbitbox is Wayne Holloway-Smith’s first foray into long-form narrative, but retains the originality, compression and power which characterize his poetry collections (most recently Love Minus Love, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize). Exploring a mother and her young son’s reactions to an all-consuming domestic threat, Joelle Taylor has described how, in Rabbitbox , Holloway-Smith ‘bunches language like a fist, one that unravels into shadow butterflies’. Holloway-Smith was in conversation wit...
Jun 24, 2026•56 min
Artist and film-maker Lauren J. Joseph’s first novel At Certain Points We Touch , described by Olivia Laing as ‘A stone-cold masterpiece’ was hailed as a Debut Novel of the Year by the Observer in 2022. Her second novel takes us from the night-spots of Soho to the febrile Berlin music scene. A story of obsession and excess, doppelgängers and disassociation, fame and the terrible things we do to feel loved, Lean Cat, Savage Cat (Bloomsbury) is an unforgettable novel from one of the most exciting ...
Jun 22, 2026•1 hr
Isabel Waidner’s latest novel As If (Hamish Hamilton) is an existential farce exploring fading hopes and lost dreams through the medium of two very different, but very similar men. ‘Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas’ wrote Jude Cook in the Guardian . Waidner was in conversation with artist and film-maker Sarah Wood. You can buy a copy of As If from the London Review Bookshop . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 20, 2026•1 hr
Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth has been a shop favourite ever since we discovered Long Live the Post Horn, a powerful tale about loneliness and the struggle between capitalism and humanity told through the microcosm of the Norwegian postal service. Hjorth is in conversation with Catherine Taylor to discuss Repetition (Verso), her sixth novel to be published in English, translated by her indefatigable champion Charlotte Barslund. As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance ...
Jun 17, 2026•52 min
In his latest novel Your Life Without Me (Canongate) journalist and novelist James Meek investigates the unpredictable links between personal trauma, family dysfunction and political violence. A retired schoolmaster is invited by the police to meet a former pupil accused of plotting to destroy St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘This is his best novel yet, writes Alex Preston, ‘a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth.’ James read from his boo...
Jun 15, 2026•1 hr 10 min
Between a quarter and a fifth of young people in the UK now suffer a mental disorder. One in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication. These numbers represent a huge and recent expansion in mental health labelling, but reveal nothing of the experience of those seeking help. In The Unfragile Mind , Gavin draws on conversations with patients, colleagues, and his thirty years of practice to explore the chequered history of psychiatry, the nature of mental health and ill-health, and the pro...
Jun 13, 2026•1 hr 17 min
Anouchka Grose, a psychotherapist specialising in climate anxiety, became disillusioned with the apparent futility of activism as it is normally conceived, resolved to look inwards, seeking a way to revolutionise the self in response to polycrisis. The Revolution Will Be Internalised (Indigo) documents that inward journey, encompassing ego-dismantling retreats, animal communication, and tantra. Grose will be in conversation about her work with Katherine Angel, author of Unmastered , Daddy Issues...
Jun 10, 2026•1 hr 4 min
In Tell Me How You Eat (Hutchinson Heinemann), Amber Husain draws on her own experience of the diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders as well as on an omnivorous diet of reading that ranges from Eleanor Marx to the Black Panthers and beyond to ask profound questions about our relationship with food, and what a truly healthy diet might be, both for ourselves and for society as a whole. She was in conversation with Emily LaBarge, author of Dog Days . You can buy a copy of Tell Me How You Eat ...
Jun 08, 2026•1 hr 3 min
To mark the release of the second print edition of contemporary food and culture magazine Vittles , writers Sheena Patel and Lauren J Joseph will discuss the short stories they contributed to the issue. One of the through lines of Issue 2 – which is themed around the notion of ‘Bad Food’ and celebrates the gross, vulgar and unaesthetic aspects of how we feed ourselves that don’t align with the aspirational bent of typical food media – is an exploration of the inter-relations between food, sex, b...
Jun 06, 2026•54 min
In Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King (Granta) the narrative switches between two increasingly intermingling timelines, medieval and contemporary, as a modern curator becomes absorbed in the story of a half-forgotten monarch struggling to maintain his rule. Perry is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit and was in conversation about her debut novel with fellow poet K Patrick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 03, 2026•1 hr 2 min
In 2016 the painter Chantal Joffe approached the writer Olivia Laing to ask if they would sit for a portrait. Out of that meeting emerged a close friendship and collaboration, and out of that collaboration has emerged Painting, Writing, Texting (Mack), an account in words and images of what can happen when two ways of looking at the world converge. Painter and writer were at the shop to talk about art, writing and collaboration, chaired by Emily Labarge (Dog Days). You can buy a copy of Painting...
Jun 01, 2026•1 hr 6 min
In an episode of the LRB podcast Aftershock recorded live at the London Review Bookshop, Daniel Soar and contributors discussed the long aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror, from Iraq and Afghanistan to drone strikes, mass surveillance and the weaponisation of the financial system. What is the legacy of Bush and Cheney’s ‘forever war’ in today’s White House? Joining Daniel Soar were Patrick Cockburn, Laleh Khalili and Tom Stevenson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi...
May 30, 2026•1 hr 7 min
When Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism was published in 1974 Freudianism was seen by most feminists as ineradicably patriarchal and inimical to the women’s movement. Mitchell’s brilliant exegesis, drawing on Lacan and Laing as well as Freud himself, instead sees Freud's asymmetrical view of masculinity and femininity as reflecting the realities of patriarchal culture, and seeks to use his critique of femininity to critique patriarchy itself. To mark a new edition of her seminal work ...
May 27, 2026•56 min
To mark the publication of Knife Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois (Yale) its author, curator and art historian Marie-Laure Bernadac was in conversation about the life and work of Louise Bourgeois with the book’s translator, Lauren Elkin. ‘Bernadac's remarkable biography has made the telling of Louis Bourgeois's life into a new art’ (Juliet Mitchell). You can buy a copy of Knife Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois from the London Review Bookshop . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...
May 25, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Author of thirteen novels, several collections of short fiction, memoirs, books for children and screenplays, Jeanette Winterson is one of our greatest and most accomplished storytellers. In her latest book One Aladdin , Two Lamps (Cape) Winterson turns to the art of storytelling itself, using the legend of Shahrazad in The Thousand and One Nights as a springboard to ask, and suggest answers to, some of the great questions: Who should we trust? Is love the most important thing in the world? Does...
May 23, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Michèle Roberts discusses the follow-up to Bookshop bestseller French Cooking for One with Alice Blackhurst. You can buy a copy of French Cooking for Two from the London Review Bookshop . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 20, 2026•57 min
In The Once and Future Riot (Cape) cartoonist Joe Sacco turns to the communal riots that rocked Uttar Pradesh in 2013. With works such as Palestine , Safe Area Goradze , The Fixer , War Junkie and Footnotes in Gaza Sacco single-handedly invented the genre of graphic reportage, and remains its leading exponent. He was at the shop to talk about his work on the frontline of global conflict, and the role that imagery can play in raising awareness. Sacco was in conversation with writer and editor Sky...
May 18, 2026•1 hr
Ghassan Kanafani, born in Acre in 1936, displaced by the Nakba in 1948 and assassinated in Beirut in 1972, was one of the leading Palestinian writers of his generation. In an event to mark a new edition of his masterpiece Men in the Sun (Verso) British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad ( Enter Ghost ) was in conversation about his work, both literary and political, with Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at Exeter University and author, most recently, of Extractive Capitalism . Learn more...
May 16, 2026•1 hr 22 min
In Up in the Air (Verso) architectural historian Holly Smith tells the story of Britain's multi-storey council housing from its beginnings to the present day, charting how at different times it became the symbol of the welfare state’s idealistic principles, and of its failures. Building on extensive research, Smith tells the story of high-rise housing from the perspective of those who lived there, from Sheffield to Liverpool to London. Smith was in conversation with historian Owen Hatherley, who...
May 13, 2026•1 hr 10 min
Attention (Jonathan Cape) collects for the first time Booker prize-winning novelist Anne Enright’s non-fiction. These essays, collated from across Enright’s career, taking us from Dublin to Galway, Canada to Honduras, delving into Enright’s own family history and offering new perspectives on writers including Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Helen Garner and Angela Carter. Enright was in conversation with Clair Wills, author of Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets . Learn more ab...
May 11, 2026•57 min
In Remedies (Hazel Press) playwright, poet, novelist, biographer, historian and much else besides Julia Blackburn meditates on the images, amulets and incantations that have been used to cure illnesses from ancient times to the present day, offering a set of poetic keys to unlock the mysterious, subtle space between mind and body. Blackburn was in conversation with the folklorist Sarah Clegg, author of The Dead of Winter and Woman’s Lore . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc...
May 09, 2026•57 min
The Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile engineering masterwork, carries water from the Owens Valley, across the desert to a barren corner of California. Without it, the city of Los Angeles and the film industry as we know it would not exist. In Aqua (Canongate) writer and film-maker Chiara Barzini explores this contested land and waterscape, blending travel writing, philosophy, cultural history and memoir in a hugely entertaining meditation on water, film, dreams versus reality, and an empire on th...
May 06, 2026•58 min
ena Khalaf Tuffaha was born in Seattle but grew up in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and her poetry reflects on her Palestinian, Jordanian and Syrian heritage and on her experience as a first-generation American immigrant. In Something About Living (the87press), winner of the National Book Award in 2024, her poems interweave the history of Palestinian suffering and resistance with the challenges of living in a world full of violence and the gentle pleasures we embrace in order to survive that violence...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 10 min
Over the last four decades, Lynne Tillman has established herself as one of America's most audacious writers with works such as Haunted Houses (1986) and Weird Fucks (2021). In Thrilled to Death (Peninsula) Tillman has curated a definitive selection from her short fictions, by turns outrageous and melancholy, meditative and abrupt. Tillman read from her work, and was in conversation with Brian Dillon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
May 02, 2026•49 min
In his latest novel Death and the Gardener Georgi Gospodinov, Bulgaria’s leading writer of fiction and winner of the International Booker Prize (for Time Shelter ), reflects on the subject of loss in a tale about a father, a son, and an orphaned garden in a fading world that spans from ancient Ithaca to present-day Sofia. Gospodinov will be presenting his work in conversation with writer and critic Chris Power. More from the Bookshop: Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ...
Apr 29, 2026•1 hr 5 min
Sarah Perry discussed her extraordinary new memoir with Amy Key. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 27, 2026•59 min
In her second novel Will There Ever Be Another You (Bloomsbury), LRB contributing editor Patricia Lockwood, one of our most original, inventive and prodigiously funny writers, conducts a phosphorescent, wild and profound investigation into what keeps us alive in unprecedented times, centring on the life of a young woman whose internal disarray echoes that of the world at large. Lockwood was in conversation with writer and poet Joe Dunthorne, whose books include O Positive , Submarine and Childre...
Apr 25, 2026•1 hr 19 min
T.S. Eliot prizewinning poet Sarah Howe discusses her new collection with Sandeep Parmar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 22, 2026•57 min
