My guest this week is award-winning author and screenwriter Stef Penney, whose novel "The Tenderness of Wolves" won Costa Book of the Year, Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, and has been translated into 30 languages. Her latest novel, "The Beasts of Paris,” takes us to Paris in 1870 at the onset of the Franco-Prussian War and its subsequent revolution. We visit Paris, not through the eyes of political or military strategists, but through some of her more marginalized characters: gay men, people of color, neuro-divergents, women, and those questioning their gender identity. As we drift between the zoo animals of the Jardin des Plantes to the women’s asylum to the homes of the bourgeoisie and makeshift hospitals, we discover who the true beasts are.
In our conversation, Stef shares who inspired her main characters and why they were so important to her, what it meant to her to focus on those often overlooked in wartime retellings, love stories and more. Then, she treats us to a reading from her book.
stefpenney.com
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