Hélène Bessette (1918–2000) published thirteen novels with Gallimard between 1953 and 1973, won the Cazes prize in 1954 and was twice in the running for the Goncourt prize and the Médicis prize.

Kate Briggs grew up in Somerset, UK, and lives and works in Rotterdam, NL, where she founded and co-runs the writing and publishing project ‘Short Pieces That Move’. She is the  translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s lecture and seminar notes at the Collège de France: The Preparation of the Novel and How to Live Together, both published by Columbia University Press. This Little Art, her genre-bending essay on the art of translation, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. In 2021, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her debut novel, The Long Form, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2023 and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize the same year.

Libreria wishes to thank Fitzcarraldo Editions who helped create this event at Libreria.

Books mentioned in the episode:

Lily Is Crying by Hélène Bessette, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

This Little Art by Kate Briggs, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

Fair: The Life-Art of Translation by Jen Calleja, published by Prototype

From Adam Weymouth, the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, comes Lone Wolf, an epic walk across the Alps in the footsteps of a wolf, throwing unique light on Europe's mountainous hinterlands at a moment of political and environmental change.

In 2011, a young wolf named Slavc set out from Slovenia. Tracked by GPS, he travelled a thousand miles through the Alps, arriving four months later on the Lessinian plateau, north of Verona. There had been no wolves in northern Italy for a century, but here he crossed paths with a female wolf on a walkabout of her own. A decade later and there are more than a hundred wolves back in the area, the result of their remarkable meeting.  In Lone Wolf, Weymouth walks Slavc's path, examining the changes facing these wild corners of Europe. Here, the call to rewild meets the urge to preserve culture; nationalism and globalisation pull apart; climate change is radically changing lives; and migrants, too, are on the move. The result is a multifaceted account of a region caught in a

moment of kaleidoscopic flux, from an award-winning writer with a uniquely perceptive eye for detail.

From celebrated author Jay Griffiths comes a unique and heartfelt insight into the healing nature of our relationship with animals. Pet-owners and animal-lovers instinctively know that animals heal. This book offers evidence, drawing widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge.

In this original, revelatory and exuberant book, Jay Griffiths draws widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge to explore how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. Wolves may be teachers of ethics; monkeys and dogs can object to unfairness and bees take collective decisions. Animals are irresistible medicine for a healthy culture, animating the arts with spectacular vitality and verve, as poetry knows.

Libreria wishes to thank Hutchinson Heinemann and Hamish Hamilton of Penguin Books who helped bring this event together at Libreria.

In Spontaneous Acts, Patrik is a literary researcher living in Berlin, a city just coming back to life after lockdown. Though his beloved opera houses are open again, Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed.

He is supposed to give a paper at a conference in Paris, on the poetry collection Threadsuns by Paul Celan, but he can’t get past the first question on the registration form: ‘What is your nationality?’ As Patrik attempts to find a connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him, he meets a mysterious stranger. The man’s name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik.

Yoko Tawada’s mesmerising novel unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music – of seeing and being seen – is examined and celebrated. Spontaneous Acts reaches out to all of us who find meaning and even obsession in the words of those before us.

Libreria wishes to thank Dialogue Books and the Japan Foundation, who kindly supported Yoko’s visit to the UK in 2024.

The discussion touches on money, the role of the state, the value attributed to commodities, canonical authors, and being outwitted by the intentions of a novel.

Rumaan Alam is the author of four novels: Leave the World Behind, That Kind of Mother, Rich and Pretty, and Entitlement. He also hosts two podcasts for Slate.  Leave the World Behind was acclaimed by book critics and nominated for the 2020 National Book Award. It was later adapted as a 2023 film for Netflix with the same name.

Libreria wishes to thank Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to host this discussion.

Aamna is the Guardian’s first community affairs correspondent, reporting on the social, political and economic experiences of the UK’s diverse communities, with a focus on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Aamna spent her early years in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Netherlands, before arriving in the UK aged seven.

Aamna is the winner of the British Journalism Award 2022 and her journalism has been shortlisted for the British Press Awards.

Libreria wishes to thank Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to host this interview for The Libreria Podcast.

Libreria wishes to thank Aniefiok, Caleb and Faber for the opportunity to host this live discussion at the bookshop, in April 2024.

We will follow this with the full recording of the special night Libreria was honoured to host, which was a celebration of a major new career-spanning selection of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry from 1968 to 2020, published by Penguin Classics. 

This is a comprehensive selection of her most important poetic works across 50 years and 15 collections, carefully curated by her long-term partner, writer and professor Virginia Fowler.

Libreria wishes to thank Nikki Giovanni and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to host this evening of intimate conversation and readings at the bookshop.

This special night, which Libreria was honoured to host, was a celebration of a major new career-spanning selection of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry from 1968 to 2020, published by Penguin Classics. 

This is a comprehensive selection of her most important poetic works across 50 years and 15 collections, carefully curated by her long-term partner, writer and professor Virginia Fowler.

Libreria wishes to thank Nikki Giovanni and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to host this evening of intimate conversation and readings at the bookshop.

We touch on the ideas of interpersonal and institutional trust, when events and public figures continue to undermine and erode them, but it’s not a doom-laden chat! 

Libreria wishes to thank Ros Taylor and Melville House for the opportunity to host this discussion.

Colum McCann’s seven novels and three collections of short stories have been published in over forty languages and received some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards and honours.

Libreria wishes to thank Bloomsbury publishing and Colum McCann for the opportunity to record this conversation at Bloomsbury’s headquarters in London. 

Benjamin Moser is a biographer and translator. His work Sontag: Her Life and Work won a Pulitzer Prize in 2020. 

Lauren Elkin is the author of Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. 

Libreria wishes to thank Allen Lane and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to host this live discussion at the bookshop.

Plagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly fellow writers like Ovid, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Franz Kafka, and Georges Perec. With inimitable humour, which ranges between autobiography, clinical observation and criticism, Sleepless is a graceful, inventive meditation by one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature

Libreria wishes to thank the publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions for the opportunity to host this live discussion at the bookshop.

My Weil is the third in a loose trilogy of novels, where significant continental thinkers are brought into contemporary academic scenarios that skewer academia, and the parochial ways of British life. Bordering on the unruly and brimming with satire – Lars’ novels are the work of a distinctive voice in British literature. 

Libreria wishes to thank publishers, Melville House for the opportunity to host this live discussion at Libreria bookshop.

Libreria wishes to thank Allen Lane publishers of the Penguin Random House group for the opportunity to host a live discussion with Matthew Desmond at Libreria bookshop.

Santanu Bhattacharya’s debut novel One Small Voice introduces us to the epic tale of a young man's life and journey through India, starting in the early 90s. We bear witness to Shubhankar’s life from a boy - who witnesses a hate crime that no one around him addresses or wants to acknowledge - to a man nicknamed, Shabby - who is faced with his own fragility and yearning for a freedom that sometimes feels unattainable. 

This intimate, delicately narrated novel will hold each reader by the hand and heart. Bhattacharya is rightly deserving of one the Observers Best Novels for 2023.

In this discussion, Ece and Lloyd talk about witnessing political changes, her desire  to tell the global story of the rise in populism, and the choices we can make together to overcome these challenges.

During the conversation John mentions the following books and authors:

The City and The City - China Miéville
Capital - John Lanchester
City of the Mind - Penelope Lively

During the conversation, JJ cites the following books and authors:

bell hooks - The Will to Change
bell hooks - We Real Cool
Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score
Thomas E. Joiner Jr. - The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
 

Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy talks to Paddy Butler about his new book on the evolution of human creativity and machine learning. While Lara Monro speaks with the curator of a new exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery, Marie Muracciole, on the legacy of the late photographer and theorist, Allan Sekula.

Josh Cohen's non-fiction title, Not Working, looks at our overworked compressed lives and explores alternative philosophical routes to happiness. Cult author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh, discusses some of the ideas behind her darkly comic novel.