The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Colombe Schneck’s THE PARIS TRILOGY is a book—or rather three books, first published separately in French—about growing up, about friendship, about love, about family, about class, about womanhood and the patriarchy…and about swimming. In short, about every side of a life, as it just happens to take place in Paris. Rendered in crisp, fluid English by translators Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer—who joins the conversation— THE PARIS TRILOGY begins with SEVENTEEN, a searingly frank account of the abortion the writer had as a teenager, passes through FRIENDSHIP, the devastating record of a childhood bond cut brutally short, and concludes with SWIMMING: A LOVE STORY, the chronicle of how this particular sport helped her build, and then grieve, a relationship.Buy The Paris Trilogy: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-paris-trilogy*Colombe Schneck is the author of eleven books of fiction and non-fiction, she has received prizes from the Académie Française, Madame Figaro and the Society of French Writers. The recipient of scholarships from the Villa Medicis in Rome and the Institut Français, as well as a Stendhal grant which allows French writers to do research and write abroad, she also spent fifteen years as a broadcaster for Canal Plus, France TV and Radio France. She was born in Paris in 1966 where she still lives, is a graduate of Sciences Po and Université de Paris II with a degree in Public Law.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A woman speaks to us from her room in a residential home, of some description. She reflects on her life, her family, her pets, on time—the past, present and the future—on Manson Family Alumnus Leslie Van Houyten, on History, on Death, on the Occult, on what it means to be “sensitive”…and so much more besides. All the while she is distracted, bothered, grounded, and charmed by her fellow residents, a rag-tag slice of American life if ever a novel saw oner. As you can imagine from a Lynne Tillman book—indeed, as you would hope—things get discursive, things get disrupted, things get WEIRD, very quickly. First published in 2006, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY achieves the eerie feat of growing more pertinent as time goes on. Deeply aware of the tradition of the novel—perhaps the American novel in particular—Tillman is also confident enough in the newness of her project, and mischievous enough in her approach, to subvert that tradition almost to breaking point. To echo the words of George Saunders, AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY is “beautiful, sacred, insane.”Buy American Genius, A Comedy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/american-genius*Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy; and Men and Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Her most recent short story collections are Someday This Will Be Funny and The Complete Madame Realism. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writing Fellowship. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at The University of Albany and teaches at the School of Visual Arts’ Art Criticism and Writing MFA Program in New York. She lives in Manhattan with bass player David Hofstra.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Aysegul Savas, whose mesmerising third novel, The Anthropologists is about a great many things. It’s about what it means to leave one’s home. It’s about attempting to lay down roots elsewhere. It’s about the mystery, banality, and all-consuming nature of love. It’s about the dynamics of friendship, and how those are stress-tested by life. It’s about growing up and growing old. It’s about how our lives are shaped by rituals…and by the lack of them. And it’s about how anxiety-inducing it can be trying to buy a flat. More concretely, The Anthropologists is about Asya and Manu, young expats in an unnamed foreign city. Asya is a documentary maker, Manu works for an NGO. They lead a care-free, meticulously tended-to life of nights out, mornings in, coffees and pints with friends, and evenings of poetry with their eccentric upstairs neighbour. But all of this—its sustainability, its “realness”— is called into question by their decision to begin flat-hunting, as well as by other life changes—changes that are in their lives, but out of their control.Buy The Anthropologists here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-anthropologists*Aysegül Savas is the author of the acclaimed novels Walking on the Ceiling and White on White. Her work has been translated into six languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Paris.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this special episode, recorded live at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Adam Biles was joined by novelists Lauren Groff and Neel Mukherjee for a wide-ranging discussion that takes the temperature (and the pulse!) of the book industry, from bookshops, to publishers, to prizes, to festivals... Enjoy!Buy The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-shakespeare-and-company-book-of-interviewsBuy The Vaster Wilds: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-vaster-wilds-3Buy Choice: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/choice-2*Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates andFuries, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.Neel Mukherjee won the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction in 2010 for his debut novel A Life Apart. His second novel, The Lives of Others, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Novel Award, and won the Encore Award. His novel, A State of Freedom, was a New York Times '100 Notable Books of the Year' and heralded as 'Stunning ... a marvel of a book, shocking and beautiful, and it proves that Mukherjee is one of the most original and talented authors working today' (NPR). Choice, a novel as triptych, is his latest book.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.