Shows
BookBlast® PodcastFathers and Fugitives, S. J. Naude, Translation Book ClubFathers and Fugitives by S. J. Naude translated by Michiel Heyns, out with Europa Editions, discussed at the BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly, London.
Fathers and Fugitives follows Daniel, a gay journalist in London, who becomes involved with a Serbian couple after meeting them at the Tate Modern. What begins as a casual, sexually charged relationship evolves into a one-sided financial arrangement. The pair suddenly vanishes then reappears the trio embark on a strange trip across Europe, ending with a tragic event in Belgrade.
The second part of the novel shifts to South Africa, wh...
2025-06-1629 min
BookBlast® PodcastRecord of a Night Too Brief, Hiromi Kawakami, Translation Book ClubRecord of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Lucy North, published by Pushkin Press discussed at the BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly, London.
Record of a Night Too Brief is a collection of three surreal novellas imbued with a particular kind of magical realism that veer at times into the absurd, creating a tapestry of strange poetic imagery, episodes of bizarre shape-shifting, time warps, and a resonant exploration of identity, love, loss. What is real? What is a dream? The boundaries are blurred.
The discussion includes insights about the art of tr...
2025-05-2533 min
BookBlast® PodcastA Dictator Calls, Ismail Kadare, Translation Book ClubA Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare translated by John Hodgson discussed at the BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly
Ismail Kadare, the renowned Albanian novelist and poet, navigated the oppressive environment of communist Albania under dictator Enver Hoxha. This unusual book is based around Stalin’s alleged three-minute telephone call to Boris Pasternak. The discussion examined the relationship between dictators and writers, the power of fear and the game of divide and rule and everyone playing off each other, Osip Mandelstam and the gulag, Stalin’s purges of the intelligentsia, whether Stalin favoured Pasternak the way Lenin favou...
2025-01-0633 min
BookBlast® PodcastClara Reads Proust, Stephane Carlier, Translation Book ClubClara Reads Proust by Stephane Carlier translated by Polly Mackintosh discussed at the BookBlast Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly.
Set in part in a hairdresser's salon in regional France this engaging novel about how Proust changes Clara's life answers many questions including: Why read Proust?; how can a book change your life?; the beauty of Proust's descriptions; Proust and Ernaux as observers of the zeitgeist; what lies behind the image; Proust suffering from the Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome and its impact; Proust's sexuality; Gallimard's publication in 2021 of never-before-published work by Proust; differences and parallels between the reading cultures of...
2025-01-0234 min
BookBlast® PodcastWarsaw Tales, BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards PiccadillyThe BookBlast® Translation Book Club meets in person on the second Monday of each month, hosted by Georgia de Chamberet, at Hatchards, Piccadilly, to discuss works of fiction in translation published in the last ten years. Georgia and Hatchards’ booksellers, choose well-written, engaging storytelling to inspire reading for pleasure as well as illuminating cultures from around the world.
Hear our special guest at the October BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, co-editor and translator of Warsaw Tales (OUP 2024). She is best-known for translating Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk. Hear highlights of Antonia's presentation and illuminating comments from book club...
2024-11-0335 min
BookBlast® PodcastGeorgia de Chamberet en conversation avec Simon Bentolila de Lire Magazine (in French)Pour célébrer la parution du livre 'Une femme, deux hommes Lesley Blanch, Théodore Kommissarzhevsky et Romain Gary' à la Maison de Balzac, Paris, le Mercredi 5 Juin 2024, Simon Bentolila de Lire Magazine a discuté avec Georgia de Chamberet, de la vie et des amours de Lesley Blanch (1904-2007). Femme libre et autonome, artiste complète et grande voyageuse, elle n’en était pas moins totalement dévouée aux deux hommes de sa vie, le dramaturge Théodore Kommissarzhevsky et l’écrivain Romain Gary, dont elle fut le première épouse.
"Il faudrait toujours chercher la femme exceptionne...
2024-07-2132 min
BookBlast® PodcastSian Williams in conversation with Georgia de ChamberetGeorgia de Chamberet at BookBlast® is delighted to interview Sian Williams, the visionary founder of the Children’s Bookshow. Discover how this much loved and hugely popular national tour of writers and illustrators of children’s literature first began and who will be on tour this autumn.
Michael Rosen: “The Children’s Bookshow takes children’s authors to meet tens of thousands of children, introducing children to how and why writers write, illustrators illustrate. They give children insights into how they too can transform thoughts and feelings into words and pictures. This is not simply a matter of it being...
2024-07-1713 min
BookBlast® PodcastAbdourahman Waberi in conversation with Georgia de ChamberetPrize-winning essayist, novelist, poet and academic, Abdourahman Waberi in conversation with Georgia de Chamberet about the events and cultures that have inspired him. Born in 1965 in Djibouti, he left his homeland for France in 1985 where he studied English at the University of Caen. He did a degree in English at the University of Dijon where he wrote a thesis on the work of the Somali novelist, Nuruddin Farah. In 2008 he moved to America. Since 2012 he is professor of Francophone literature at George Washington University.
Following on from the release of his first book – a short story collection ca...
2023-04-0335 min
BookBlast® PodcastFound in Translation | Fatima Daas discusses literary sensation, The Last One (French & English)An autobiographical first novel, The Last One tells the story of Fatima and her family. The confusing polarities between different worlds and cultures that are portrayed sparked an intense Media debate in France. Although based on true events and experiences, Fatima Daas changed certain aspects in order to be free to write what she wanted, and convey her feelings about specific events.
Tune in to hear a lively conversation with Fatima Daas and podcast host Georgia de Chamberet, about literary inspiration, handling her surprise overnight success, and the pressures directed at women from religion and f...
2022-04-0426 min
BookBlast® PodcastFound in Translation | Faïza Guène (author) & Sarah Ardizzone (translator) on Men Don’t CryFaïza Guène writes about normal people living in urban tower block estates surrounding cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Her first novel, Kiffe kiffe demain, published in England under the title Just Like Tomorrow, sold over 400,000 copies when it came out and has been translated into 26 different languages. She was just nineteen.
Tune in to hear her lively conversation with translator of sixteen years, Sarah Ardizzone, and host Georgia de Chamberet, about inner city school life, the impact of Black Lives Matter, the 2024 Olympic Games, translating argot and Arabic-influenced backslang, and all about her latest no...
2021-09-2349 min
BookBlast® PodcastInterview with Natasha Lehrer, translator of Consent by Vanessa SpringoraVanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, became an instant, international literary sensation when it was published in France in January 2020. Her beautifully written, intimate and powerful description of her relationship in the mid-1980s with the French author Gabriel Matzneff, when she was fourteen and he fifty, is a beautifully written universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, resilience and healing.
Translator, Natasha Lehrer, and Georgia de Chamberet, discuss libertarian attitudes and French culture; the trouble with Feminism in France; literary name-and-shame public revelations leading to the downfall of powerful sexual abusers; and more.
Presented by Ge...
2021-04-0930 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #15 | Georgian author Beka Adamashvili & Tamar Japaridze on literary satireAs a reminder of what entertaining, inoffensive satire constitutes, pick up a copy of Bestseller by Georgian trailblazer, Beka Adamashvili, deftly translated by Tamar Japaridze, published by Dedalus Books.
A blogger, screenwriter and creative director at an advertising company, Adamashvili’s mischievous sense of humor and deep knowledge of world literature, combined with marketing nous, sharpen his pen. Multiple allusions from literary classics are woven into his postmodern narrative as he sends up digimodernism and the shallowness of the desire for fame. Dante, Conan Doyle, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and other literary heavyweights rebel against the author. Be...
2020-11-0539 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #14 | Lucy Popescu interviews Goran Vojnović, Olivia Hellewell"In The Fig Tree, deftly translated by Olivia Hellewell, Goran Vojnović portrays three generations of a family whose lives are marked by the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its brutal aftermath. It is a remarkable portrait of a country’s fragmentation and a family’s fracture." Lucy Popescu, The BookBlast Diary
Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such
2020-10-2054 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #13 | Lucy Popescu & Natasha Lehrer discuss Nathalie Leger’s The White DressIn THE WHITE DRESS, Nathalie Léger tells the story of Pippa Bacca, a thirty-three-year-old Italian feminist performance artist who decided to hitchhike from Milan to Jerusalem wearing a white wedding dress to symbolise “marriage between different peoples and nations.” Through her intense examination of Bacca’s final work and of the often polarised public reaction to the role of women in art, Léger also compellingly addresses her own conflicted relationship with her elderly mother.
Does Bacca’s work actually need to be translated in a narrative form. Like any visual artist, it’s there in the performa...
2020-09-2430 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #12 | Georgia de Chamberet interviews publisher Philip Gywn JonesGeorgia de Chamberet interviews Philip Gwyn Jones who has extensive experience at the heart of literary publishing having started his career at the late, lamented Flamingo imprint at HarperCollins, then founding Portobello Books and merging it with Granta Books, moving on to Scribe, and since June this year, heading up the Picador imprint at Macmillan.
“You were the first British editor to offer a book contract to Jenny Erpenbeck, Ove Knausgaard, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Kathryn Schulz and Zadie Smith, amongst others. Tell us about some of your recent discoveries published by Scribe and what makes each on...
2020-09-1753 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #11 | Lucy Popescu interviews Tommy Wieringa and his translator Sam GarrettLucy Popescu interviews Tommy Wieringa and his translator from Dutch, Sam Garrett. Wieringa's novel The Death of Murat Idrissi was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019. In 2018 he won the Bookspot Literatuurprijs for his novel De heilige Rita, The Blessed Rita, published this year by Scribe UK. It is a compelling portrait of the forgotten and Wieringa makes a strong case for empathy with those living on the margins of society.
“Did you grow up in a rural or urban community?”
“What draws you to write about men on the margins?”
“Tommy, regarding e...
2020-09-1734 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #10 | Interview (en français): Tahar Ben Jelloun explique le terrorismeInterview avec le romancier, essayiste, critique et poète marocain le plus vendu au niveau international, Tahar Ben Jelloun, au sujet de son livre, Le Terrorisme explique à nos enfants. Cette semaine les complices présumés sont devant le tribunal de Paris pour les attentats de janvier 2015.
Pouvez-vous décrire brièvement à nos auditeurs anglophones les racines du terrorisme en France et quelles sont les objectifs présumés des terroristes?
Comment pensez vous que l’État pourrait contrôler ses forces de police et leurs «bavures»? Est il possible que les consequences toxiques du colonialisme pu...
2020-09-1023 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #10 | Interview: Tahar Ben Jelloun, On TerrorismThe Moroccan poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist, Tahar Ben Jelloun, is one of France's most celebrated writers. He has written extensively about Moroccan culture, the immigrant experience, human rights, and sexual identity.
With the trial opening this week in Paris over the January 2015 attacks on the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and a kosher supermarket that killed seventeen people, Terrorism: Conversations with My Daughter (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) is a timely and essential read.
Can you briefly describe for our listeners the roots of terrorism in France, and what are its intentions?
2020-09-1023 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #9 Guest interview | Christopher MacLehose, founder of MacLehose PressChristopher MacLehose brought WG Sebald, José Saramago, Haruki Murakami, Claudio Magris, Javier Marías, Jin Yong and many others to English-language readers. He is credited as having launched the bestselling genre of crime fiction in translation now known as “Nordic Noir”.
In 1984 you published Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg, followed by Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander’s series in the 1990s a.k.a. “the father of Nordic noir”, Jo Nesbo in the 2000s, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Why do Scandinavians write such great crime fiction?
As a consistently...
2020-09-0357 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #8 | Lars Mytting (author) Deborah Dawkin (Translator) The Bell in the Lake“‘And this also’, said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth.’ This epigraph, taken from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, sets the tone for Mytting’s sweeping investigation of legend, superstition, and the effects of industrial and ideological change on a small, secluded village in rural Norway . . . A powerful contemporary narrative that is rooted in history.” Rachel Goldblatt, The BookBlast Diary
What were your sources for the pagan, Viking and Christian folklore myths and legends referenced in The Bell in the Lake? Is all communication translation? Tune in to hear the answers to these...
2020-09-0343 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #7 | Lucy Popescu (Journalist) Lulu Norman (translator) on Aziz Binebine"Tazmamart was an underground military prison in southeast Morocco where those considered enemies of the king were detained from 1972 to 1991. It was built after two failed coup d’états against Hassan II of Morocco. Many of those detained were unwitting participants in the alleged coup . . ." Lucy Popescu, The BookBlast Diary
How easy is to forgive a regime and one’s former torturers?
What were Aziz’s primary motives behind writing this book – to lay ghosts to rest? To effect change? The world he depicts is barely imaginable for those of us living in a democracy.
Tun...
2020-08-2727 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #6 | Interview : Michael Schmidt, Carcanet PressThe world of publishing has changed a great deal since you first founded Carcanet in 1969 with Peter Jones, Gareth Reeves, working from a farmhouse kitchen table. What is the magic ingredient meaning you have been able to adapt and evolve?
Publishing poetry is a tricky business. Your list comprises collections by established English language poets, new editions of work by deceased writers, and newcomers on the scene. Tell us about five of your lead titles in translation, and what makes each one so special.
Since making a living from writing – let alone poetry – is hard thes...
2020-08-2035 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #5 | Interview : James Womack, translatorJames Womack is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Spanish and Portuguese Section at Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam College. He reveals how he landed in Spain and translating Manuel Vilas’s latest collection of poetry and short fiction, Heaven, published this year by Carcanet Press. The author of fourteen collections of poetry, seven books of essays, and seven novels, Vilas’s novel Ordesa was a bestseller in Spain; is forthcoming in English with Canongate in November 2020.
“Vilas is exceptionally skilled at capturing the misery and ecstasy that can coincide and enmesh in a single moment . . . Emotional depth and layers of m...
2020-08-2034 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #4 | Interview: Anne Meadows (Granta) Jamie Lee Searle (translator)"Anna Kim’s The Great Homecoming is a sweeping tale of friendship and betrayal that explores the devastating impact of the Korean War, Russian and American politicking and the Cold War on individuals, families and cities in Korea and Japan during the 1950s and ’60s. It may be a historical novel, but it puts people – a people; an entire nation – at its heart. This slick and accomplished translation by Jamie Lee Searle is sure to widen Kim’s fanbase and acclaim, and rightly so." Rachel Goldblatt, The BookBlast Diary
Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such | 37:
2020-08-1337 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #3 | Interview: Rose (Eland) Robyn Marsack (translator)The Swiss writer and photographer, Nicolas Bouvier, (1929-98) was a traveller in the real sense of the word, navigating different worlds and writing about now forgotten communities. He gives us alternative perspectives on places like the Balkans, Iran, Azerbaijan, Japan, China, Korea and the highlands of Scotland.
The Way of the World, The Scorpion Fish and So It Goes have become cult reads. Hear his translator Robyn Marsack and publisher Rose from Eland Books discuss why Nicolas Bouvier such a special writer and what his writings reveal about the man and his journeys undertaken in the 1970s, ’80s...
2020-08-0640 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #2 | Interview : Adam Freudenheim, Pushkin PressPublishing classics requires a special acuity. What makes a classic?
Pushkin Press focuses on modern classics, mostly translated works. How did you discover your most successful no-longer-forgotten comeback author, Stefan Zweig?
What type of person do you think makes a very good translator?
Hear Adam Freudenheim, publisher & MD of Pushkin Press, answer these questions and give unexpected insights as he talks about his love of literature and publishing translations.
Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such
2020-07-3032 min
BookBlast® PodcastBridging the Divide #1 | Interview : J.S. Margot, authorJ.S. Margot’s memoir, Mazel Tov, "is the story of an extraordinary friendship – in fact several extraordinary friendships that marked the twenties of the author J.S.Margot. At first sight it is the story of a young Flemish woman at university in Antwerp who teaches the four children of an Orthodox Jewish family to earn a bit of extra money. It is also the story of her first great love for an Iranian political refugee. In both cases she is exposed to a culture and religion that is not her own. She also begins to realise that she i...
2020-07-3043 min
BookBlast® PodcastThe BookBlast® Podcast | LIVE interview: Michèle Roberts, Franco-British novelistMichèle Roberts is the author of twelve highly-acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also published poetry and short stories, and is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.
Topics: Born a twin. Growing up in Edgware outside London; summer holidays in Etretat, Normandy; Roman Catholic schooling and rebellion; becoming a writer and being published by The Womens Press and Virago culture and creative freedom in the 1970s and 1980s...
2020-07-2549 min
BookBlast® PodcastThe BookBlast® Podcast | LIVE interview: Narisa Chakrabongse, CEO, River BooksNarisa Chakrabongse, the founder and CEO of River Books, and the great granddaughter of King Rama V (Chulalongkorn) of Siam, is the editor of the Oxford River Books English-Thai Dictionary.
Chakrabongse Villas, the family home, is a small boutique hotel in Bangkok. I caught up with her some months ago when she was in town, to talk about her unusual Thai-Russian-British background, being a foreigner living in a strange land and, of course, River Books, which you can visit online at riverbooksbk.com
Presented by G de Chamberet | A BookBlast® Production
2020-07-2547 min
BookBlast® PodcastThe BookBlast® Podcast | LIVE interview: Keith Anderson a.k.a. Bob AndyReggae legend, Keith Anderson, known as Bob Andy, talks about his life and times in a rare and exclusive interview.
Best known in the UK for the track recorded with Marcia Griffiths "Young, Gifted and Black" (1970), he is widely regarded as "one of reggae's most influential songwriters," Wikipedia. The conversation takes in his childhood in Kingston, Maxfield Park children's home, Kingston Parish Church choir and Tyrone Evans. The Paragons. Studio One.
His first solo hit record (1967) "I've Got to Go Back Home" was followed by "Desperate Lover", "Feeling Soul", "Unchained", and "To...
2020-07-2557 min
BookBlast® PodcastThe BookBlast® Podcast | LIVE interview: Maggie Gee, authorMaggie Gee is the author of fifteen books, thirteen of which are novels, including her latest, Blood, which is published by Fentum Press.
She talks about being born to working-class parents and climbing into an uneasy place between classes; winning a major open scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she did an MA in English literature and an MLitt on Surrealism in England; breaking into the publishing game; being selected as of the original Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983; why there is still such reticence on the part of the dominant ‘white’ literary establishment to addr...
2020-07-251h 03
BookBlast® PodcastThe BookBlast® Podcast (LIVE) | Playing Chinese Whispers with Nicky HarmanNicky Harman, is a leading translator and promoter of Chinese literature. She was interviewed for The BookBlast® Diary in 2016 and Xu Xiaobin's Crystal Wedding reviewed.
Our conversation about writing from a non-English speaking world that is 4,834 miles away from the UK takes in the dark side of socialism and government censorship, what strengths are drawn by Chinese writers from the richness of their cultural background and national identity, issues faced by translators, Chinese women writers, sex and violence in contemporary Chinese literature, the unique aspects of contemporary Chinese literature, the growing popularity of science fiction an...
2020-07-2556 min
BookBlast® PodcastRobert Elms BBC London Radio interview Georgia de ChamberetRobert Elms talks to Georgia de Chamberet about The BookBlast® 10x10 Tour in association with Waterstones. A carnival of authors, poets, translators and independent publishers visit 9 major cities across England, 11 September to 15 November, holding live talks at flagship stores and inspiring readers to immerse themselves in authentic, offbeat new writing.
Interview date: 01 September 2018
2020-07-2506 min
BookBlast® PodcastLesley Blanch, a life remembered, BBC Radio 4Most famous for the group portrait of four women who escaped the conventional constraints of domestic life, The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch was a scholarly romantic and a bold writer with a lifelong passion for Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East. Her posthumously published memoirs collects together the story of her marriage with Romain Gary, previously published only in French; her journalism on the artistic melting pot that was London between the wars; and a selection of her most evocative travel pieces, to create the story of a fascinating, bohemian – and, at times outrageous - life th...
2020-07-2504 min
BookBlast® PodcastLesley Blanch, Twenty Minutes, BBC Radio 3Celebrated author and distinguished traveller, Lesley Blanch, MBE (1904-2007), talks to Teresa Cherfas about her love of Russia and of the mysterious family friend whom she referred to as The Traveller. Although to some it may seem that Blanch excelled in magnifying her own peculiarities to become larger than life, even mythic, she was always true to herself. Her private life was so inaccessible as to be virtually unimaginable. Blanch gave this interview the day after coming out of hospital, in February 2007. She died four months later.
Visit her website at lesleyblanch.com twitter @lesleyblanch
2020-07-2519 min