London Review Bookshop Podcast

Triage (Allen Lane), Claudia Rankine’s new book, is an unclassifiable piece of writing, blending narrative, criticism and lyricism to create something capable of facing ‘the collective devastation of the present’ (in Saidiya Hartman’s words). Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence: we eavesdrop on their conversation, memories and enduring friendship. Rankine was in conversation with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, whose debut collection Quiet (Faber, 2023) won the Rathbones Folio Poetry Prize. You can buy a copy of Triage from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In How to Be Well, journalist and essayist Amy Larocca takes on the behemoth which is the contemporary ‘wellness’ industry, in prose which Joanna Rakoff has described as a ‘magical synthesis of crackerjack reporting, incisive cultural commentary, and, most importantly, elegant, self-reflective memoir’. From active charcoal toothpaste to green juice enemas, Larocca explores the science and history of various controversial treatments, to reckon with the 3.7-trillion dollar industry’s profits and promises. Larocca was in conversation at the Bookshop with journalist and literary critic Gaby Wood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sex in novels is commonplace, but how do poets write about sex--and is it any good? Join Sarah Howe and Sandeep Parmar for a live recording of the LRB podcast Poetry and the Turning World, with special guests Sophie Robinson (Prairie Oyster) and Oluwaseun Olayiwola (Strange Beach). Poetry and the Turning World is a special short series on the LRB Podcast, looking at the ways in which contemporary poetry deals with our everyday challenges and the wider changes we face globally. Sandeep and Sarah take different themes and explore when and where poetry can be a guiding force for understanding individual and collective experiences. The subjects covered in the series were work, technology, divorce, sex, weather, food and money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power Lauren Elkin uses her own experience of training as a young soprano in the 1990s as a springboard for a powerful investigation of the female voice, from Maria Callas to Beyoncé and beyond. Part manifesto, part cultural history and all full-throated celebration, Vocal Break is a joyous call to arms and hymn of praise. Lauren Elkin was in conversation with writer, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari. You can buy a copy of Vocal Break from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Regular LRB contributor Daniel Trilling has been researching and writing about the far right in Britain and beyond for more than a decade. His latest book If We Tolerate This (Picador), published ahead of the momentous English local, Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections on May 7, is a short and powerful polemic examining how far right ideas have come to dominate the political agenda, and outlining a strategy for how we might combat them. Pankaj Mishra writes ‘Combining forensic enquiry with moral passion, Daniel Trilling has emerged as one of our most intrepid and resourceful reporters.’ He was in conversation about his work with William Davies, Professor of Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of This Is Not Normal and Nervous States. You can buy a copy of If We Tolerate This from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Ambivalence (Fitzcarraldo) Brian Dillon explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It's at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life. Dillon was in conversation with writer Olivia Laing, author of The Silver Book. You can buy a copy of Ambivalence ⁠from the London Review Bookshop⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Durbin’s The Wonderful World That Almost Was unravels, for the first time, the intertwined stories and work of two boundary burning, paradigm-tilting, never more relevant American artists, Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. Weaving together deft art criticism with moving portraits of both men's inner lives, and assembled with exhaustive research, Durbin’s book is an ode to a lost but still-living world—and two men who defined it. You can buy a copy of The Wonderful World That Almost Was from the London Review Bookshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices