BookBlast® Podcast

Abdourahman Waberi in conversation with Georgia de Chamberet

Prize-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 called Le Pays Sans Ombre, Land Without Shadows – he has had 6 novels, 3 short story anthologies, 3 volumes of poetry and 2 essay collections published, and a great many articles. The recipient of numerous awards, he was recently named one of the “50 Writers of the Future” by LIRE magazine.

Abdourahman Waberi discusses his childhood in a deprived neighbourhood of Djibouti, a pocket-sized but strategically important African nation near the Suez Canal. He remembers the pains of growing up with polio, how he kept strong in the face of merciless bullying at school, and his love of storytelling. He talks about life in France and North America, how writers Annie Ernaux and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o inspire him, and more. So tune in!

 

Produced by BookBlast  

Found 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 from society, and more besides The Last One is published in English, by HopeRoad Publishing. The interview is in both French and English.

 

Produced by BookBlast  

Found in Translation | Faïza Guène (author) & Sarah Ardizzone (translator) on Men Don’t Cry

Faïza 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 novel out in English, Men Don’t Cry (Cassava Republic), in which quirky family antics and familial pettiness make for much hilarity: everyone can relate to it.

Produced by Simon James  

Interview with Natasha Lehrer, translator of Consent by Vanessa Springora

Vanessa 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 Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by BookBlast®

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Bridging the Divide #15 | Georgian author Beka Adamashvili & Tamar Japaridze on literary satire

As 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. Bestseller pokes fun at literary pretentiousness, humbug and bookish aspirations with wit and verve.

Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such

Bridging 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

Bridging the Divide #13 | Lucy Popescu & Natasha Lehrer discuss Nathalie Leger’s The White Dress

In 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 performative act. Which makes one ask is all communication translation or indeed translatable?

In your view, what makes a good translator and how can translation change perceptions of our world?

Discover the answers to these questions and more, as Lucy Popescu interviews award-winning translator Natasha Lehrer who has translated two of Léger’s books.

Presented by Lucy Popescu | Produced by Rupert Such 

Bridging the Divide #12 | Georgia de Chamberet interviews publisher Philip Gywn Jones

Georgia 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 one so special.”

“Tommy Wieringa - author of The Blessed Rita which you have published in Spring this year - is one of europe’s biggest selling authors. What is his magic ingredient?”

“As voices from the margins have become louder, influencing the political mainstream, how has fiction written from an “outsider” perspective evolved and increasingly become an identifiable genre in publishing since you began your career publishing translations?”

Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such

Bridging the Divide #11 | Lucy Popescu interviews Tommy Wieringa and his translator Sam Garrett

Lucy 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 empathy for your characters and their situations, by writing about flawed characters you remind us of our shared humanity. Was that your intention?”

Hear the answers to these questions and more in this insightful exclusive interview.

Presented by Lucy Popescu | Produced by Rupert Such

Bridging the Divide #10 | Interview (en français): Tahar Ben Jelloun explique le terrorisme

Interview 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 puissent être mieux reconnues pour réévaluer le récit publique sur l'islam et la politique sociale républicaine?

Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé à écrire ce livre?

Écoutez les réponses à ces questions et plus encore dans cette interview qui est très nécessaire.

Presenté par Georgia de Chamberet | Produit par Rupert Such | version originale