Lithouse Podcast

Youssef Rakha is an award-winning author of both novels and poetry, as well as a journalist and a photographer. I 2009, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Arabic writers under 40. He is known for The Crocodiles-trilogy, following a group of poets before, during and after the 2011 revolution. The Dissenters is his first novel written in English.The story is told by Nour. When his mother dies, he starts cleaning out her things in the attic, and soon discovers a far more complex portrait of the woman he thought he knw. From her forced marriage to a far older man in the 50s – whom she left, via a liberated French student and a pious, religious mother to a radical activist during the 2011 revolution.His mother’s many faces mirror the changing history of Egypt, as well as the limitations and possibilities for women through that turbulent time.At the House of Literature, Rakha is joined by Teresa Pepe, Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo, for a conver

What characterizes the new Arabic literature? Writers involved in the Arab Spring are now imprisoned, exiled or living with the political repression, wars and disillusionment that has marked the region ever since. How are these experiences expressed in literature and the broader culture?Teresa Pepe is professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo. Her research has focused on Arabic literature and culture during and after the Arab Spring. She is the author of the book Blogging from Egypt: Digital Literature, and editor of several collective volumes, including Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World.In this talk, she will examine how Arabic culture has evolved since the 2011 uprisings. She will illustrate how authors such as Ahmed Naji, Mohammed Rabie, Basma Abd el-Aziz, and Alaa Abd al-Fattah employ dystopian and horrific narratives to reflect a world that is rapidly shifting due to ecological and technological changes while political crackdowns, wars, and violence are on the rise.These are the books

The Arab Spring is when Egyptian Youssef Rakha first starts writing novels. Moroccan Soukaina Habiballah publishes her first poetry collection shortly after, while French Moroccan Leïla Slimani works as a journalist at the time, reporting on the protests unfolding throughout Northern Africa and the Maghreb, before turning to fiction.How have these experiences shaped their writing? All three writers explore the quest for freedom, whether on a personal or a collective level. Can we talk about a post-Arab Spring literature, or is that merely a handy label for the West?«Just like Arab Muslim lives, Arab Muslim writing is not worth the civilized world’s attention,» Rakha wrote in an essay in Guernica last year.Soukaina Habiballah is the award-winning author of four poetry collections, a short story collection, a novel and a play, Nini Ya Momo.Youssef Rakha was selected among the Hay Festival’s best Arabic writers under 40 in 2009. He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels and poetry, most recentl

Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021, as the first African-born writer in almost 20 years, for having, in the jury’s reasong, «highlighted the impact of colonialism and the fate of refugees». Now, in his first new novel following the prize, he has turned his focus closer to our own time. The novel has been titled Theft. But what is stolen, and who is the thief?In a postcolonial East Africa in the early 1990s, marked by global change, we meet the oy Badar. He is sent away from his foster parents in Zanzibar to serve a rich family on the mainland, in Dar es Salaam. He feels inferior and ignorant, but is soon embraced by the son of the house, Karim. When Badar is later accused of stealing from his employer, he gets to move in with Karim and his fiancée, Fauzia.In a finely tuned and precise language, Gurnah portrays the deeply human experiences of the three young people, through trials and tribulations as they grow up, and he explores human relations with characteristic em

French Moroccan Leïla Slimani‘s own family was the inspiration when she started her critically acclaimed trilogy: The Country of Others, Watch Us Dance and this year’s publication, J'emporterai le feu (“I will carry the fire”).We follow the Belhaj family through three generations, from when Mathilde leaves France to follow her new husband Amine to his home country Morocco after the second world war, and their struggle to find their place between two cultures that are rather hostile to each other, to their daughter, Aïcha through her childhood in Morocco and studies in France, before the last book takes the story up to our time through Aïcha’s daughter Mia.This epic family saga contains love stories and sex, violence and racism, while the family’s path is continually affected by the historical currents of Morocco and the wider world. French Mathilde grapple with the strict role for women in the Moroccan countryside, while her daughter Aïcha feels ogled and set apart as a Moroccan in Fr

With her deep and fearless portrayals of German and European history, Jenny Erpenbeck is a unique voice in world literature. Her authorship is widely considered to be among the most important of our time, leaving critics to discuss when, and not if she receives the Nobel prize for literature. This year, her latest novel Kairos was awarded the International Booker prize. In Kairos, we follow an increasingly dysfunctional couple, mirroring the dying nation state of the DDR, where the novel is set. It is a novel about love and passion, but equally about the relationship between power and the arts.In her writing, Erpenbeck combines an acute awareness of history with succinct prose and a daring sense of form and composition. Through short stories, essays, plays and a host of critically acclaimed novels, she explores themes such as identity and memory and shows us the human costs of totalitarian regimes. How does the past continue to shape our present and future?Now, Erpenbec

«The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.»In a Sephora-store on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a security guard is watching the shoppers. In the early 70’s, Ferdinand arrives in Paris to start his new life and needs to learn the ropes. In the 90’s, friends Ossiri and Kassoum work nights in the Parisian underground.Three generations of immigrants tell their stories in Standing Heavy, the sensational debut novel from author Armand Patrick Gbaka-Bredé, better known as GauZ’. With playful language, an eventful plot, and tons of observational humour, Standing Heavy is a devilish comedy about France’s colonial heritage seen through the eyes of the service class.GauZ’ is a French-Ivorian author, editor and publisher based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The novel Debout-Payé was lauded by critics when it was released in 2014, and in 2023 the English translation was shortlisted

«Water remembers. It is humans who forget.»A droplet of water finds its way from ancient Mesopotamia to a street urchin in 1840’s London and on to a Yazidi family in present day Iraq. Three people’s lives and destinies are connected by two rivers – the Thames and the Tigris – and the water which flows through them.In the novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak weaves together lost empires, colonial plunder, modern conflicts, and the study of water in a plot stretching from ancient time to the present. With thrill, humour and evocative language, There Are Rivers in the Sky is both enthralling and fascinating, and has been lauded by authors such as Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Mary Beard.Turkish-British Elif Shafak is one of the world’s foremost writers of historical fiction. Through her fourteen novels, she has explored cultural tensions and socioeconomic inequalities between East and West in historical and contemporary settings. She has also been an active champion of the free

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan British writer, known for her debut novel Kintu, as well as the short story collection Manchester Happened and the novel The First Woman. She has been awarded the Coomonwealth Short Story Prize and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and also been named one of the 100 most influental Africans by New African magazine.This is Makumbi’s reading list:Brit Bennett, The Vanishing HalfYvonne Battle-Felton, Curdle CreekChinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart                           Arrow of GoodNgugi wa Thiong’oWole SoyinkaNamwali Serpell, The Old Drift                            The FurrowsAyọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stay With MeAyesha Haruna Attah, The Hundred Wells of SalagaLeila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley  &n

From intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois to activist Malcolm X, from heads of state Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi to poet Aimé Césaire and artist Bob Marley – they have all played a role in the history of panafricanism.Panafricanism is a political, intellectual and cultural movement that was first formed around the turn of the last century among Africans in the diaspora, in the UK, the US and the West Indies. They fought for a shared, Black identity, for decolonization of the African continent, and for the Black diaspora to return to Africa to strengthen the continent – with some even calling for a United States of Africa.What role has panafricanism played in the fight for independence in different African countries, and in the creation of Black art, culture and identity? And what is the significance of the new wave of panafricanism today?Hakim Adi is an award-winning professor of history and writer, and the first historian with African roots to become a professor of history in the UK. In this lecture

In the wake of #metoo, the French literary scene has been marked by multiple stories of sexual abuse. Books like Vanessa Springora's Consent and Camille Kouchner's The Familia Grande have sparked debates about abuse culture, consent, and the misuse of authority.Neige Sinno's Sad Tiger can be read as part of this line of publications, while also giving the conversation a literary context. While it is necessary to denounce abuse, doing so is also a burden, and Sinno’s approach to dealing with her own story is to turn to fiction. Through analysis of literary works by authors like Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison and Virginie Despentes, she explores power and powerlessness, cultural bias, and finding a language to talk about these experiences.Neige Sinno is a French author and doctor of American literature. Sad tiger is her literary breakthrough, both in France and internationally. A bestseller and the winner of a long list of literary prizes, including Prix

For decades, African speculative fiction has weaved together past and future, combining myths and legends with space exploration and social criticism and broadening the scope of both African and speculative literatures.In this original lecture, invited by The House of Literature and recorded digitally, Nigerian author Wole Talabi presents a timeline of African speculative fiction from its early beginnings and until the present day. Here, he reflects on the influence and importance of the genre, citing its central works and defining its distinguishing features.Wole Talabi is a Nigerian engineer and author of speculative fiction currently living in Perth, Australia. His published works include the short story collections Incomplete Solutions (2019) and Convergence Problems (2024), as well as the novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023), which won the Nommo award for best novel in 2024. His short stories have been nominated for and won several awards, including the Sidewise, Nommo and Locus awards, as

The word «dictator» might make you think of a select few evil men of the past, who sat alone on their thrones and ruled far-flung kingdoms with an iron fist. Today’s reality is something very different: The autocrats of the world are playing on the same team, doing deals in secrecy to maintain power and keep their riches. They share troll farms and other resources across political lines, either they’re communists, nationalists, or Shia radicalists, and hide their wealth in tax havens all over the globe. And Western states play along.This is the current situation, as described by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc., her new book on the hidden network of autocrats and autocratic regimes that has blossomed since the turn of the century. In the book, Applebaum describes the golden age of dictatorship as she charts the political and economic ties that unite the dictators of the world – often with democratic states as useful idiots or direct facilitators.Anne Applebaum is one of the world’s foremost au

When British-Ugandan Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wanted her debut novel Kintu published in Europe, publisher after publisher told her no – the novel was “too African”: It was neither about the colonial period nor about Idi Amin, the two things about Uganda that Western readers have heard of. And also, the characters had such complicated names. They couldn’t imagine any European readers would like to learn something new about Uganda and its history.Makumbi’s novel is an epic family saga, taking us through the history of Uganda – from the kingdom of Buganda before the arrival of the Europeans, and up to today’s society, in which she combines myths and Biblical history with fairytales and oral storytelling tradition. In a distilled, lyrical language, we meet the patriarch Kintu in the mid-eighteenth century, when he is subject to a dark curse, before we follow his many descendants into our own time, where they all, in different ways, struggle with curses of their own. We particularly see how t

Sonia Nasir is a somewhat successful actor in London. After a distressing end to a love affair, she travels to see her sister in Haifa, Israel, where their father’s family is from, and where she’s hardly been since she was a teenager. Soon, she is pulled into a local theatre production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet on the West Bank. And as the past catches up with Sonia, ghosts appear off stage as well.Enter Ghost is a complex and skillfully composed novel, an exploration of identity and belonging, the role of art, community, and the painful story of a family and a people.Isabella Hammad is a British-Palestinian author. Her debut novel The Parisian won a number of awards, including the Betty Trask Award and the Palestine Book Award, and I 2023, she was included on Granta’s prestigious list of Best young British Novelists. Enter Ghost is her second novel.Priya Bains is a poet, an activist and editor of the literary magazine Vinduet. She will join Hammad for a conversation abou

When she began her masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale in 1984, Margaret Atwood was living in West Berlin, just a stone’s throw away from the Wall to East Berlin, with its omnipresent secret police. The world behind the Iron Curtain clearly influenced her famous future dystopia, in which she set as a rule that she would not include any horrors that humans had not already done in some other place or time in history.On the other side of the Wall, author Jenny Erpenbeck grew up in the east, the German Democratic Republic (DDR), experiencing the country’s zenith as well as its disintegration and the victorious capitalist West just a few years later. In her award winning body of work, Erpenbeck has gone on to explore the complex history of Germany and greater Europe, where ordinary citizens become hostages to the grand ideas and ruptures of the times.Both Atwood and Erpenbeck are concerned with totalitarianism, with history and how it informs the present and the future, with our fragile n

Canadian author Margaret Atwood is a living legend. Since her debut in 1961 with the poetry collection Double Persephone, she has published more than 70 books of poetry, short story collections, novels, children’s books, essay collections and even opera librettos, including the world-renowned novels The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood has truly made her mark with her literary explorations of totalitarianism, patriarchal structures and environmental destruction, and is known for her almost prophetic speculative fiction, set in societies curbing women’s rights or experiencing a worldwide pandemic or environmental collapse.In her literature, Atwood is mischievous, fearless and original, frequently incorporating elements from classical texts, fairytales and works by writers like William Shakespeare or George Orwell. While her books often include elements from historical events, they also suggest new worlds and possibilities for the future.Atwood was joined by journalist and writer Karin Haugen f

How can Africa reach its full potential when Europe is still the blueprint to model oneself after? Not only has centuries of colonization and exploitation stripped the continent of opportunities, but the term “development” has all but become synonymous with following in Europe’s footsteps.This is the argument of Senegalese academic Felwine Sarr in his book Afrotopia, which has had great influence in academic as well as public discourse. In it, he explores the possibility of a new Africa, with the help of African thinkers, artists and philosophic traditions. Africa needs a utopia, a goal to strive towards, without comparing themselves to others, Sarr says. How might such an afrotopia look?Felwine Sarr is a leading academic and a prominent voice in public discourse. He is professor in economics at the Gaston-Berger University in Senegal, and professor of French and francophone studies at Duke University, USA, as well as a musician and the author of several novels. Together with the

The author of twelve novels, along with a number of non-fiction books and plays, Rachel Cusk is one of our most prominent contemporary writers. Her brave, razor sharp and original voice has made her a favourite with readers and critics alike.Cusk is a truly innovative writer, pushing the boundaries of the form for each new publication. Already in 2008, when she published her brutally honest depiction of motherhood A Life’s Work, she was miles ahead of contemporary feminist discourse. Her Outline trilogy was considered by many critics a revolution of the novel form.Her latest novel Parade is no different. Here, Cusk continues her exploration of unconventional structures, delving into the lives of a number of artists all referred to with the initial G. Their stories are told through a nameless narrator moving seamlessly in and out of the different tales. The result is a boldly composed exploration of the role of the artist and what drives someone to create art, a novel about h

Lately, much attention has been given to political attacks on prestigious writers. The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie and the deplatforming of Adania Shibli at the Frankfurt Book Fair sparked international outrage and raised awareness of ongoing threats to individual writers today.Far less attention is given to the fact that across the world, writers are prosecuted and jailed for their supposed dissidence to autocratic regimes. Turkey is among the world leaders in its number of jailed authors, a trend that increases wherever war and conflict can form a forgiving political climate.What is the effect of political persecution on individual writers? And how does such a climate affect the writers who remain “free”?For decades, Yasemin Çongar has been one of Turkey’s most renowned journalists and oppositional voices to the Turkish regime. Since 2016, she has herself been on trial for her journalism, and is still fighting a lengthy prison sentence.In 2018, Çongar also founded the Kıraathane literature