240. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

The wonderful Nina Stibbe, award-winning novelist and diarist, joins us for a discussion of Sue Townsend's classic comic creation. When it was first published in 1982, the confidential journal of Leicester's foremost teenage poet and intellectual was an overnight success, eventually going on to become the best-selling British novel of the 1980s. Four decades on, we can see it for what it truly is: a masterclass in the art of writing comic prose and a work of political satire that stealthily made its way into several million British homes. Nina, Andy, John and Nicky celebrate Sue Townsend's life and career, laugh at her jokes, and make the case for her to rank alongside Charles Dickens, Stella Gibbons, George Grossmith and E.M. Delafield in the pantheon of British writers.

Books mentioned
Sue Townsend - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾; The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole; The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole; Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years; Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction; Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years; The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999-2001
Nina Stibbe - Love Nina: Despatches from Family Life; Man at the Helm; Paradise Lodge; Reasons to be Cheerful; An Almost Perfect Christmas; One Day I Shall Astonish the World; Went To London Took The Dog: The Diary of a 60 Year Old Runaway
Raymond Briggs - Fungus the Bogeyman
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Other links
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ -Audio Book read by Stephen Mangan
Archive on 4: Remembering Sue Townsend, Aged 68 ¾
The Secret Life of Adrian Mole TV series - Youtube (full series)
Ian Dury - Profoundly in love with Pandora

239. The Image of Her by Simone de Beauvoir

To discuss The Image of Her (1966) by Simone de Beauvoir we are joined by writer and translator Lauren Elkin, whose previous books include Flâneuse: Women Walk the City; Scaffolding and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir was also a prolific novelist.

In The Image of Her—newly translated by Elkin after more than forty years— reads like a dispatch from the smooth surface of a life coming quietly undone. Laurence is a successful advertising executive with a picture-perfect Parisian existence—handsome husband, lover, chic flat, weekends in the country—but when her daughter starts asking difficult questions about injustice, that surface begins to crack. We trace the novel’s shifting reception—from period piece to prescient critique—and consider Beauvoir’s voice as a novelist: ironic, exacting, unexpectedly funny.

Books mentioned
Simone de Beauvoir - The Image of Her; The Second Sex; The Inseparables; A Very Easy Death
Lauren Elkin - Flâneuse: Women Walk the City; Scaffolding; Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art; No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute

238. Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time, joins John and Andy for a tour of Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the sixteenth-century fable widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, newly translated by Julia Lovell. The Monkey King's powers include shape-shifting, immortality and "being incredibly rude"; listeners of a certain age will be familiar with his legendary exploits - and those of his travelling companions Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - from the 1980s cult TV series Monkey, a staple of BBC2's week-night schedule. The book itself is a hugely entertaining combination of action caper, farce and religious allegory, analogous in some ways to The Pilgrim's Progress but with a lot more jokes and fighting. We throughly enjoyed chatting with Kaliane about Monkey King, her own writing and also her day job as an editor at Penguin Classics and we think you will feel the Monkey Magic too. All together now: "the spirit of Monkey was irrepressible!"

Books mentioned
Wu Cheng'en - Monkey King: Journey to the West (translated by Julia Lovell)
Wu Cheng’en - Monkey King Makes Havoc in Heaven (Penguin Archive)
Kaliane Bradley - The Ministry of Time
Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (translated by Edith Grossman)
John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress
Jay Griffiths - Nemesis, My Friend

Other links
Watch Monkey
Journey to the West (soundtrack by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett)
Penguin Archive - 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years

237. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

“A masterpiece I don’t fully understand—and don’t need to.” This week’s book is The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, a bold, baffling, and darkly funny novel that has confounded and enchanted readers since its publication in 1995. Joining us to explore it is Chris Chibnall, award-winning screenwriter, playwright, and now novelist, best known for Broadchurch and Doctor Who, and author of the new detective novel Death at the White Hart.

Written in the wake of Ishiguro’s Booker-winning The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled follows Ryder, a famous pianist, through an unnamed European city where nothing is quite as it seems.

We talk about Ishiguro’s decision to “go electric” with this daring experiment in narrative structure and tone; how the novel grew from critical confusion to cult classic; and why its unresolved tensions and emotional obliqueness are part of its power.

For anyone who’s ever had to perform while still in their dressing gown, this one’s for you.

Books mentioned
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day; The Unconsoled
Chris Chibnell - Death at the White Hart

Other links
Kazuo Ishiguro - Desert Island Discs (2002)

236. What Remains by Hannah Arendt

Elif Shafak and Lyndsey Stonebridge join John and Andy for a discussion of the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher whose books include The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This being Backlisted, we approach Arendt's formidable oeuvre and truly extraordinary biography via an intriguing route: her poetry. The book Elif and Lyndsey have chosen for this special episode is What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Norton), published in November 2024. Arendt wrote poetry from a young age; she kept the manuscript of many of these poems with her as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, in the camps and on the boat to America. What did they represent to their author? And as the world finds itself once again grappling with the threats of populism and totalitarianism, what can we learn from Hannah Arendt? We hope you will enjoy this fascinating, thought-provoking conversation as much as we did. 

Elif Shafak's new novel There are Rivers in the Sky (Penguin) is available now. Lyndsey Stonebridge's We are Free to Change the World: Lessons in Love and Disobedience (Vintage) was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2024.

Books mentioned
Hannah Arendt - What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt; The Origins of Totalitarianism; The Human Condition; Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil; On Revolution, On Violence; On Men in Dark Times
Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky; The Island of Missing Trees; 10 Minutes 38 seconds in this Strange World; The Forty Rules of Love  
Lyndsey Stonebridge - Placeless People:Writings, Rights and Refugees; The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg; Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights; We are Free to Change the World: Lessons in Love and Disobedience 
Walter Benjamin - Illuminations 
Samantha Rose Hill - Hannah Arendt

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235. A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford

Sybille Bedford's A Compass Error (1968) is a classic coming-of-age novel, a love story, a family saga and a study in psychological suspense rolled into one. Joining us to discuss it are the novelist Francesca Reece and Krista Cowman, Professor of History at the University of Leicester. The late Hilary Mantel described A Compass Error, Bedford's third novel, as 'a powerful and merciless book ... which visits on its heroine a series of humiliations that cut to the quick'. We explore the book in the context of Bedford's remarkable life and body of autobiographical work, which encompassed fiction, travel writing, reportage and memoir. Where does her "Riviera lesbian thriller" - copyright, Francesca Reece - fit into it all? 

Books mentioned
Sybille Bedford - A Compass Error; Jigsaw; Pleasures and Landscapes; A Visit to Don Otavio; The Faces of Justice
Krista Cowman - Women of the Right Spirit!  Paid Organizers of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1904 - 18
Francesca Reece - Voyeur; Glass Houses 
Christopher Isherwood - Goodbye to Berlin
Patrick Modiano - Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas; Missing Person
Norman Lewis - Voices of the Old Sea

Other links
Hilary Mantel - A Past Recaptured (2001, The New York Review of Books)

234. A Life by Elia Kazan

We explore Elia Kazan's memoir A Life (1988) with veteran biographer and critic John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, amongst others. Kazan enjoyed a dazzling career in both theatre and film, directing the original stage productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman, before making a series of cinematic masterpieces: On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd, Wild River. He discovered both Marlon Brando and James Dean. But his decision to testify in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee compromised and complicated his artistic legacy. In A Life, Kazan comes out swinging; his personality is stamped on every page of this fascinating, pugnacious and still-controversial book, echoing the defiant words of Terry Molloy at the climax of On the Waterfront: "I'm glad what I done". 

Books mentioned
Elia Kazan - A Life
John Lahr - Notes on a Cowardly Lion; Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton; Diary of a Somebody and Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman; All My Sons
Thornton Wilder - The Skin of Our Teeth

Other links
On the Waterfront
East of Eden
A Face in the Crowd
Wild River

233. Biographies and Memoirs

A Backlisted Special dedicated to biographies and memoirs, with books by Nancy Mitford, Roger Lewis, Elizabeth Jane Howard, P.D. James and Jean Rhys.

John Mitchinson talks to the writer and friend of the show Laura Thompson about five of her favourite books – two of them biographies (Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford and The Real Life of Laurence Olivier by Roger Lewis) and three memoirs (Slipstream by Elizabeth Jane Howard; Time to Be in Earnest by P.D. James and Smile Please by Jean Rhys).

The discussion explores the difference between writing about someone else’s life and writing about your own; the various motivations that lead writers to produce memoirs, and the relationship between both forms and fiction. Laura Thompson is herself the writer of both biography and memoir. She has written a life of Agatha Christie, and books about the Mitford sisters and the Lord Lucan case, as well as a memoir of her grandmother, The Last Landlady. This is her fifth appearance on Backlisted, after joining us for episodes on Nancy Mitford, Antonia White, P.D. James and Agatha Christie.

Books mentioned
Nancy Mitford - Madame de Pompadour; Love in a Cold Climate 
Roger Lewis - The Real Life of Laurence Olivier; Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor 
Elizabeth Jane Howard - Slipstream 
P.D. James - Time to Be in Earnest
Jean Rhys - Smile Please
Laura Thompson - The Last Landlady; Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters

232. Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban - Rerun

Due to an unfortunate bout of flu, we've had to postpone the Biographies and Memoirs special until next week. So in lieu of that we offer a rerun of one of our classic episodes with a new introduction from John.

Riddley Walker is widely considered to be a post-war masterpiece. Anthony Burgess included it in his list of the 99 best novels published in the English language since 1939 saying ‘this is what literature is meant to be.’ Harold Bloom included it in his book The Western Canon, an examination of the work of 26 writers central to the development of Western literature. Hugh Kenner called it a book ‘where at first sight all the words are wrong, and at a second sight not a sentence is to be missed.’

To discuss it we were joined by the novelist Max Porter and the writer and critic Una McCormack. Max is the author of four novels. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has appeared on episodes of Backlisted dedicated to Joyce Cary and Tarjei Vesaas. 

Una is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling science fiction writer who has written more than twenty novels based on TV shows such as Star Trek and Doctor Who. She has appeared on ten Backlisted episodes as well as this one, those dedicated to Georgette Heyer, Anita Brookner, William Golding, Tolkien, Terrance Dicks, Noel Streatfield, Winifred Holtby, Octavia Butler and our Sci-Fi special.

Books mentioned:
Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker; Turtle Diary; Pilgermann; The Moment Under the Moment
Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers; Lanny
Una McCormack - The Undefeated
David Jones - In Parenthesis
Anthony Burgess - Ninety-nine Novels - The Best in English since 1939 - A Personal Choice
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Iain M. Banks - Feersum Endjinn
Will Self - The Book of Dave
Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake
William Golding - The Inheritors

Other links:
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - ‘Old Fart at Play’ (from Trout Mask Replica, 1969)
Russell Hoban lecture (1990)
Rowan Williams on Riddley Walker in the New York Times (May 2019)
Riddley Walker Annotations -useful reference site
Russell Hoban Official Website
The Head of Orpheus - A Russell Hoban Reference Page

231. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Revisit

This episode we revisit a classic show from November 2021.

It is Backlisted's 150th show and to mark the occasion we are joined by authors Alex Christofi (Dostoevsky in Love) and Arifa Akbar (Consumed: A Sister's Story) for a discussion of one of Russia's greatest writers Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was born in Moscow on November 11 1821, 200 years ago this month. We concentrate on his pioneering novella Notes From Under the Floorboards AKA Notes From Underground (1864) and consider its impact and continuing relevance to modern life.

Also in this episode John enjoys Dark Neighbourhood (Fitzcarraldo), the debut collection of stories by Vanessa Onwuemezi; and, having let it settled for a few months, Andy unveils his favourite novel of the year, Gwendoline Riley's My Phantoms (Granta).

Books mentioned:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Notes from Underground (trs. Constance Garnett); Crime & Punishment (trs. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky); The Gambler (tr. Jane Kentish)
Arifa Akbar - Consumed: A Sister’s Story
Alex Christofi - Dostoevsky in Love; Let Us Be True; What Doesn't Kill You: Fifteen Stories of Survival
Gwendoline Riley - My Phantoms; My Phantoms (audiobook read by Helen McAlpine ); First Love
Vanessa Onmuewezi - Dark Neighbourhood
Fenanda Melchor - Hurricane Season (trs. Sophie Hughes)
Nikolai Chernyshevsky - What is To Be Done?
Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis & Other Stories (trs. Michael Hofmann)
Hemann Melville - Bartleby the Scrivener
Rowan Williams - Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction
Vladimir Nabokov - Lectures on Russian Literature

230. Winter Reading 2025

Happy new year! We kick off 2025 - and Backlisted's tenth anniversary year - with our traditional Winter Reading episode, in which Andy, John and Nicky recommend a selection of favourite books to see you through the next few months: fiction and non-fiction, old, new and not yet published. "May you go farther sooner."

Discussed in this episode and available to purchase from bookshop.org/backlisted, if in print:

Fat Time and Other Stories by Jeffery Renard Allen (Graywolf Press)
The Girls: A Story of Village Life by John Bowen (McNally Editions)
All My Precious Madness by Mark Bowles (Galley Beggar)
The North Road by Rob Cowen (Heinemann Hutchinson)
Box Office Poison: Hollywood's Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey (Faber)
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Faber)
Black and White Baby by Bobby Short (Dodd, Mead and Company) - https://archive.org/details/blackwhitebaby00shor/mode/2up
The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
Base Notes: The Scents of a Life by Adelle Stripe (White Rabbit)
Earth to Moon: A Memoir by Moon Unit Zappa (White Rabbit)

229. Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville

Join the Backlisted crew as we navigate the swells and surges of Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville. That's right, Moby Dick is a Christmas book! Andy, John and Nicky welcome aboard novelist Jarred McGinnis and writer and editor Erica Wagner to discuss and celebrate this legendary literary leviathan, one that has sunk many a podcast before us. We enjoy a challenge on Backlisted, however; and there are few novels as challenging or rewarding as Moby Dick. So set sail with us in pursuit of Melville's white whale, with readings, songs and truly dreadful puns, on the Backlisted Christmas Special 2024: the Pequodcast that gives new life to an old - and magical - book.

Bonus audio! We Wish You a Moby-Dickmas and Ahabby New Year! Andy compiled this playlist to tie in with the Backlisted Christmas Special 2024. It is sequenced to follow (loosely) the plot of Moby-Dick. WARNING! The final track is definitely NSFW i.e. Naughtily Subverting Free Willy. Do not play if there are small children around.

Books mentioned
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Erica Wagner - Chief Engineer: The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge
Jarred McGinnis - The Coward

Other links
Andy’s festive playlist
Burt Reynolds - Moby Dick audiobook
Moby Dick full film with Gregory Peck (1956)
2016 Nobel Literature Lecture with Bob Dylan

228. Voices of the Old Sea by Norman Lewis

We are joined by the poet Katrina Porteous and the writer and editor Patrick Galbraith to discuss Norman Lewis’s account of the of the three summers he spent working in Farol, a remote fishing village on the Costa Brava in the late 1940s. His book records the intricacies of life in a small community whose rhythms are based on the shoals of sardines and tuna, and whose beliefs and rituals have remained unchanged for a thousand years. But change does arrive in the shape of a black marketeer who buys up two-thirds of the village and opens a garish tourist hotel. Within a year, the ancient Spain that Lewis loves begins to sink beneath the tidal wave of greed, commercialism and liberal attitudes that package holidays and unfettered tourism unleash.

Lewis wrote his book thirty-five years after he’d lived in Farol. We are now 40 years on from its publication in 1984. Do his stories still resonate? We discuss why his sharply observed and artfully written books aren’t better known today, and put his writing in the context of the travel writing boom of the 1980s. Katrina also brings a fresh perspective to Lewis’ experience– she has lived in the fishing village of Beadnell on the Northumbrian cost for the past thirty years, where similar erosion of culture., language and tradition has taken place.

Books mentioned
Norman Lewis - Voices of the Old Sea; Naples ‘44; Jackdaw Cake; A Dragon Apparent and Golden Earth
Katrina Porteous - The Lost Music; Two Countries; Edge; Rhizodont
Patrick Galbraith - In Search of One Last Song: Britain’s Disappearing Birds and the People Trying to Save Them; Uncommon Ground: Rethinking our Relationship with the Countryside 
Julian Evans - Semi-Invisible Man: The Life of Norman Lewis

Other links
The Poetry of Fishing (Katrina) - https://katrinaporteousdotcodotuk.wordpress.com/2021/02/17/the-poetry-of-fishing/
Don McCullin on Norman Lewis (BBC Radio 4) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09111hc
BBC Naples ‘44 (television documentary)
The Time Traveller 1966 (television documentary)

227. The Moon’s a Balloon - David Niven

Rupert Everett joins us to discuss David Niven's memoir The Moon’s A Balloon. This show represents the fulfilment of a long cherished ambition: to dedicate a whole Backlisted to a book that Andy and John consider to be the most entertaining ever written. And who better to join them as a guest than an actor, writer and director who has had his own tussles with Hollywood and who has published a series of bestselling volumes of memoir and short stories? First published by Hamish Hamilton in 1971, The Moon’s A Balloon has sold over five million copies and set the standard for actorly reminiscences for generations to come. But few have equalled Niven’s knack for combining hilarious anecdotes about the Golden Age of Hollywood with unsentimental and sometimes deeply moving incidents drawn from his own life. Has the book's charm endured?  Does it still seem, as the Guardian recently voted it, the number one Hollywood memoir of all time? We hope you have as much fun making up your mind up as we did during the recording - the episode is worth listening to for Rupert's readings alone. We also discuss our guest's latest collection of short stories, The American No, which comes highly recommended from us both. Think of this episode as Christmas come early, or better still, ‘the English Yes’.

Books mentioned
David Niven - The Moon’s A Balloon; Bring on the Empty Horses
Rupert Everett - The American No; To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde; Red Carpets And Other Banana Skins; Vanished Years
Oscar Wilde - De Profundis
Proust - In Search of Lost Time
Sheridan Morley - The Other Side of the Moon: The Life of David Niven

226. Nicholas Fisk - Grinny & You Remember Me!

Sam Leith, author of The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading, returns to Backlisted to discuss two novels by Nicholas Fisk, Grinny (1973) and its sequel, You Remember Me! (1984). Fisk's SF thrillers were tremendously popular with young readers during the 1970s and 1980s but his work is now rather forgotten, an error we wish to correct as a matter of urgency. The plot of You Remember Me! may be summarised as follows: a TV celebrity becomes the head of a mass populist movement in the UK, leading their country into fascism at the behest of an alien power. As such, Fisk's novel has something to tell us (and our children) right now, which is why we have released this episode early. Our conversation was recorded on Friday 8th November 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the US election results; in addition to Grinny and You Remember Me!, Sam, John and Andy offer suggestions of other books written for young people that warn of the reality of life under fascist regimes, including The Once and Future King, Watership Down and V for Vendetta. Just don't call it an emergency podcast. In the words of Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny: 'When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework. To have such a framework requires more concepts, and having more concepts requires reading. So get the screens out of your room and surround yourself with books.'

Books mentioned:
Nicholas Fisk - Grinny; You Remember Me!; Trillions
Sam Leith - The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading; You Talkin’ to Me? Rhetoric From Aristotle to Trump and Beyond; Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page
Timothy Snyder - On Tyranny; Freedom
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
Richard Adams - Watership Down 
Alan Moore - V for Vendetta
Penelope Lively - The Ghost of Thomas Kempe
Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising
Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

225. Arthur Conan Doyle - Round the Fire Stories

Happy Hallowe'en 2024! Join John, Andy and Nicky, plus guests Andrew Male and Dr Laura Varnam - AKA the Backlisted Irregulars - for this year's Hallowe'en special, celebrating Arthur Conan Doyle's "grotesque and terrible"  Round the Fire Stories, first published in 1908. As he was the first to point out, there was much more to Conan Doyle than merely being the creator of Sherlock Holmes; he was a multifaceted and energetic man, a true force of human nature. In addition to being the quintessential 'ripping yarns', these tales of mystery and suspense reveal their author to us in ways he did not intend, from his anxiety about the colonial expansion of the British Empire to his obsessive determination to prove the existence of an afterlife. Please note: in this episode, there is an impromptu séance, much discussion of the immortal soul of 221B Baker Street, plus Andy's most terrifying quiz yet. Scared yet? You will be. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Foyles Charing Cross Road on 23rd October 2024.

Books mentioned
Arthur Conan Doyle - Round the Fire Stories (Dodo Press); Round the Fire Stories; The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I; The Hound of the Baskervilles; Gothic Tales
Jade Cuttle, Antonia Taylor, Laura Varnam, Katie Hale (ed), Jane Commane (ed) - Primers Volume Seven

224. Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio by James Young

Author Will Hodgkinson and actress and director Caroline Catz join Andy and John to discuss James Young's Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio, first published in 1992. This is the story of Nico, former model, film actress, erstwhile singer with the Velvet Underground and darling of Andy Warhol's Factory. After a decade of heroin addiction, by the early 1980s she was living in Manchester, concerned mainly with feeding her habit. A local promoter persuaded her to play a few shows in Italy. Hired straight from university as her keyboard player, James Young was both witness to, and participant in, this tour and those that followed. Fellow spirits including John Cale, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and John Cooper Clarke are among those who appear in his classic memoir of this period, a comedy of tragic proportions and vice versa. As the author of a recent highly acclaimed memoir of an errant would-be rock star, Street-Wise Superstar: A Year With Lawrence, Will offers his insights into the challenges presented to the writer by such a mercurial subject; while Caroline, who directed and starred in a film about neglected composer Delia Derbyshire, discusses the obstacles faced by female artists then and now. Please be aware that this episode, just like the book it describes, contains both strong language and scenes of a sordid nature; fortunately, it is also very funny. 

Books mentioned
James Young - Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio 
William & Jim Reid - Never Understood: The Jesus and Mary Chain
Will Hodgkinson - Street-Wise Superstar: A Year With Lawrence; In Perfect Harmony: Singalong Pop in ’70s Britain; Song Man: One Man's Mission to Write the Perfect Pop Song; Guitar Man: A Six String Odyssey;

Other links
Nico records mentioned - Chelsea Girl (1967); The Marble Index (1968); Desertshore (1970); Camera Obscura (1985)
Nico Icon documentary (1995) - watch here
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - Marylebone Theatre until 4th November 2024
The Extraordinary Miss Flower (2024)

223. Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Sower

his episode features a live recording made at Foyles in London, where John was joined on stage by Una McCormack, making her record breaking tenth appearance on Backlsited, and Salena Godden, who returns eight years after blowing us away in the episode on Hubert Selby Jr.  The book under discussion is Parable of the Sower a 1993 novel by the American science fiction writer, Octavia E. Butler.  For those of you don’t know her work, you are in for a roller coaster ride. As fellow American novelist Junot Diaz has written, Butler is ‘one of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century.’ This episode examines what makes her so important and why her reputation has taken time to establish itself, particularly in the UK. The novel is set in a superficially familiar California, a place that is rapidly descending into violence and mob rule, and is told through the eyes of Lauren Olamina, a teenage girl who has the ability to feel the pain of others as her own. The discussion covers the themes of religion and its uses in the novel, and the disfiguring legacy of slavery that Butler’s work constantly returns to. It provides an excellent introduction to the work of a writer whose books become more relevant with each passing year. 

An extended bonus episode on this book will be available next weekend for Patrons on the Locklisted level.

Books mentioned:
Octavia E. Butler - Parable of the Sower; Parable of the Talents; Kindred; Blood Child
Salena Godden - Mrs Death Misses Death; With Love, Grief and Fury 
Una McCormack - Star Trek: Discovery: The Way to the Stars; Enigma Tales
Courttia Newland - A River Called Time
Irenosen Okojie  - Curandera 
Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God 
Lynell George - A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky
NK Jemisin - How Long Until Black Future Month
Colson Whitehead  -  The Underground Railroad 
Percival Everett -  James 
Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson - The Principle of Moments
Nisi Shawl - Everfair
Gerry Canavan - Octavia E. Butler
Stephen King - The Stand 

222. Lore Segal - Her First American

This episode explores the third novel by the nonagenarian American writer Lore Segal which was originally published in 1985 by Knopf and is due to be released in the UK for the first time by Sort Of Books in 2025. We are joined by Sort Of Book’s publisher and co-founder Nat Jansz, who made her Backlisted debut back in 2018 on the Tove Jansson episode. She is joined by the distinguished American novelist and short story writer Jeffery Renard Allen, who was a student of Lore Segal’s. 

The story of Her First American follows the Jewish refugee Ilka Weissnix, who arrives in America having just turned twenty-one, after spending a decade escaping from Hitler’s Europe and becoming separated from her family in the process. Speaking barely any English she rooms with her cousin in New York’s Upper West Side and soon embarks on a relationship with Carter Bayoux, a Black middle-aged alcoholic poet and intellectual – who she first encounters randomly in a bar in Cowtown, Nevada – and who becomes ‘her first American’.

The novel is the record of their always touching, often funny and inescapably sad relationship. Segal, whose own life story resemble Ilka’s in many ways calls the book ‘her favourite child’. The New York Times review went further declaring that: ‘Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel’ Intrigued? You’ll have to listen to the end to find out whether we reach the same conclusion…

Books mentioned
Lore Segal - Her First American; Other People’s Houses; The Journal I Did Not Keep: New and Selected Writing
Jeffery Renard Allen - Song of the Shank; Fat Time and Other Stories; An Unspeakable Hope
Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Other links
Taint Taint Taint Magazine 
Evergreen Review 
Sort of Books 

221. Season 3 Prequel

The waiting is nearly over! Ahead of Backlisted Season 3 - and our tenth anniversary year - John, Andy and Nicky get together to chat about books, vintage vinyl, what they did on their holidays, but mostly books: Sarah Perry's novel  Enlightenment, recently longlisted for the Booker Prize; The Haunted Wood, Sam Leith's fascinating new history of childhood reading; I Will Die in a Foreign Land, Kalani Pickhart's timely exploration of the roots of the war in Ukraine; and The Cooler (1974), a newly-republished thriller by George Markstein, co-creator of the classic 1960s television series The Prisoner (and available direct from plumeriapics.co.uk). Plus this episode contains details of the subjects of our next half dozen shows, so get in there quick before the library reservation queue snakes round the block and prices on the secondhand market go through the ceiling*. As Nicky says, this Locklisted-like episode of Backlisted is the recap before the new season begins in earnest next week. Be seeing you.

 A metaphorical ceiling, not the ceiling of the library around which snakes a queue, which is also a metaphor of sorts. The point is, this one goes live to the world in three days from now and you have a head start**, dear listeners.

** A metaphorical head start.

Books mentioned
Sarah Perry - Enlightenment; The Essex Serpent
Sam Leith - The Haunted Wood
Kalani Pickhart - I Will Die in a Foreign Land
George Markstein - The Cooler
James Joyce - Ulysses
A.S. Byatt - Possession