LitHouse podcast: Recent Episodes
The House of Literature in Oslo - Litteraturhuset
LitHouse is the English language podcast from the House of Literature (Litteraturhuset) in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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 recently the novel The Dissenters.
Leïla Slimani is one of the most prominent literary voices in Frankophone literature today. She won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2016 for her novel Lullaby, and has excited critics with her trilogy of a French-Moroccan family saga.
Habiballah, Rakha and Slimani was joined by journalist and critic Helene Hovden Hareide for a conversation about freedom and revolutions, about the power of literature for readers, authors and for moving the world forward.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 empathy and eye for alienation.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is professor of postcolonial literature, and the author of eleven novels, among them the critically acclaimed Paradise and Afterlives. Gurnah is a master of allusion, and in an understated language, he creates recognizable, flawed characters, always with a keen eye for those feeling like outsiders.
One who has followed Gurnah’s writing for years, and also been mentored by him herself, is author and historian Nadifa Mohamed. She joined Gurnah for a conversation about theft and trust, betrayal and belonging.
The conversation took place the University of Oslo’s Ceremonial Hall.
The event is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 France. In a vibrant and immediate language, Slimani portrays the various family members’ struggles to belong, and to create a home and a family.
Leïla Slimani is one of the most central Francophone authors today. Her definitive breakthrough came with the award-winning thriller Lullaby, for which she was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2016. She has written a number of critically acclaimed novels and non fiction titles.
Slimani was joined by associate professor of French literature, Kjerstin Aukrust, for a conversation about home, belonging and a family history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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, Erpenbeck is joined by author and editor Mattis Øybø at the House of Literature for a conversation on a dark and burning European history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
«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 for the International Booker Prize.
At the House of Literature, GauZ’ meets author and journalist Yohan Shanmugaratnam for a conversation on class, capitalism and the security guard.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
«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 freedom of speech and of human rights, particularly women’s rights, an activism evident in both her fiction and non-fiction. She lives in London in self-imposed exile, after past and continuing threats in Turkey against her work as an author.
At the House of Literature, Shafak meets author and journalist Marte Spurkland for a conversation on time, cultural conflicts, and the memory of water.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 Half
Yvonne Battle-Felton, Curdle Creek
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Arrow of Good
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Wole Soyinka
Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift
The Furrows
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stay With Me
Ayesha Haruna Attah, The Hundred Wells of Salaga
Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley
River Spirit
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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, he will provide a broad introduction to the history of panafricanism.
The event was part of Black History Month Norway.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 Femina, Prix Littéraire Le Monde, and Prix Goncourt des lycéens, the book has been endorsed by authors like Annie Ernaux and Kathrine Nedrejord.
Hadia Tajik is a Norwegian politician for Arbeiderpartiet, with a background in journalism, human rights, and law. She will meet Sinno for a conversation on abuse culture and misuse of authority, and how to use fiction as a gateway to shared experiences.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 well as being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Talabi also compiled a database of published works of African speculative fiction, which he edited from 2015 to 2021. He is also the editor of several anthologies of African speculative fiction, including the landmark publication Africanfuturism. An Anthology (2020) and remains one of the field’s chief advocates and central thinkers.
Works mentioned:
Early Works (1930s – 1960s):
Jean-Louis Njemba Medou – Nnanga Kon (1932)
Muhammadu Bello Kagara – Gandoki (1934)
D.O. Fagunwa – Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938)
Amos Tutuola – The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952)
Post-Independence Flourish (1960s – early 2000s):
Sony Labou Tansi – Life and A Half (1979)
Buchi Emecheta – The Rape of Shavi (1983)
Kojo Laing – Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988)
Ben Okri – The Famished Road (1991)
Kojo Laing – Major Gentl and Achimota Wars (1992)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – The Wizard of the Crow (2004/2006)
The Internet Age and Genre Recognition (early 2000s – early 2010’s)
Nnedi Okorafor – Zahrah the Windseeker (2005)
Ahmed Khaled Towfik – Utopia (2008)
Lauren Beukes – Moxyland (2008)
Lauren Beukes – Zoo City (2010)
Nnedi Okorafor – Who Fears Death (2010)
Ivor Hartmann (ed.) – Afro SF (2012)
Increasing Global Recognition (2010s – present):
Deji Bryce Olukotun – Nigerians in Space (2014)
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – Kintu (2014)
Tade Thompson – Rosewater (2016)
Tochi Onyebuchi – Beasts Made of Night (2017)
Akwaeke Emezi – Freshwater (2018)
Namwali Serpell – The Old Drift (2019)
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki – Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon (2020)
Other works mentioned:
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)
Helen Oyeyemi – The Icarus Girl (2005)
Wole Talabi – Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023)
Weird Tales, fantasy and horror magazine
Jungle Jim, bi-monthly African pulp fiction magazine
Omenana Speculative fiction magazine
Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2018)
“Afro-mythology and African futurism”, essay by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum
Nnedi Okorafor – “Spider the Artist”
Phoenix, publishing imprint at Ouida Books
Mother, publishing imprint by Jacana Media
Chikodili Emelumadu – Dazzling (2023)
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu – Drinking from Graveyard Wells (2023)
Pemi Aguda – Ghostroots (2024)
Tlotlo Tsamaase – Womb City (2024)
Suyi Davies Okungbowa – Warrior of The Wind (2023)
T. L. Huchu – The Library of The Dead (2021)
The Sauúti collective
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 authors of history books, among others The Iron Curtain and the groundbreaking Red Famine. Stalin’s War with Ukraine. As a journalist and writer, she is a central voice in the U.S. and Eastern European political scenes and a fierce critic of Western states’ moves away from democratic values and principles.
Nils August Andresen is a historian and editor of the newspaper Minerva. Since his days as a student in Russia, he has been particularly interested in Putin’s rise to power and the threats towards international order.
Applebaum met Andresen on stage for a conversation on the new world order – and how they’re getting away with it.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 the men of the family struggle to live up to society’s masculine ideals. Maybe this is the real curse, affecting each of their lives and slowly poisoning the entire society?
Kintu is Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s first novel, published in 2014 after she won a manuscript competition by Kenyan Kwani Trust. Makumbi has since published the short story collection Manchester Happened and the novel The First Woman, and she has won a number of awards for her writing.
At the House of Literature, she is joined by author and creative director for the organization Radical Books Collective, Bhakti Shringarpure, for a conversation about a family and a nation, about curses and consolation.
The event was supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 about ghosts and sisters, Hamlet and the occupation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 normality, and how quickly it can turn into brutality. While they write lyrical and innovative fiction - incorporating mythology, literature and philosophy - the links to the world around us, either past, present or futures we are headed towards, are always there.
Margaret Atwood has published more than 70 books of poetry, short story collections, novels, children’s books,and essay collections. Stories like The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam trilogy have made her a name across the world, and a number of her books have been adapted to film, TV, opera and ballet, and, like Erpenbeck, she is regularly mentioned as a favorite for the Nobel prize in literature.
Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of a number of critically acclaimed and award winning novels, short story collections, plays and essays. Her latest novel, Kairos, won the 2024 International Booker Prize.
In this event, these two exceptional authors met for the first time on stage, for a conversation about history and society, memory and hope for the future. The conversation was moderated by Helge Jordheim, professor of cultural history at the University of Oslo.
The conversation took place on November 2st, 2024 in The University of Oslo's Ceremonial Hall.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 for a conversation about the past and the present, prophetic stories and her unique body of work.
This conversation was hosted by The House of Literature in Oslo and took place on October 31st, 2024 at the Oslo Opera House.
LitHouse is a podcast from The House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
Music by Apothek.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 philosopher Achille Mbembe, he has established Les Ateliers De La Pensée, which gathers academics and writers from across Africa and the diaspora. In 2018, commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy authored a seminal report on repatriation of African cultural artifacts from French museums.
Andreas Liebe Delsett is a writer and former artistic director at the House of Literature, currently working on a book about South Africa's recent history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 how both art and artist are shaped by society’s gaze. In Parade, Cusk dissects interpersonal relationships and existential questions with precision and clarity.
In The University of Oslo's Ceremonial Hall, Cusk will be joined by journalist and publisher Jessika Gedin, for a conversation about the connections between art and life, about gender roles, the artist and how we human beings are able to live side by side.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 house in Istanbul, where she worked as director until March 2023. At Kıraathane, as well as through her work as a translator and writer, Çongar has helped raise awareness of the challenges faced by writers today.
Now, Çongar visits the House of Literature for a philosophical and personal lecture on freedom, creativity, and the transcendent power of literature.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Igoni Barrett is a Nigerian writer of novels and short stories, especially well known for his award-winning novel 2015 Blackass. In 2014, he was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of African writers under 40. Barrett is also part of the House of Literature's artistic council, advising in our project to promote African literature.
This is Igoni Barrett's reading list:
- Abdulrazak Gurnah, Afterlives (Etterliv)
- Zoe Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (Ingen går seg vill i Cape Town)
- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (De blåeste øyne)
Jazz
- Alex Haley, Roots (Røtter)
- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Usynlig mann)
- Yambo Ouloguem, Le devoir de violence (Bound To Violence)
- Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (Menneskenes mest fordekte minne)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What do the Mings, The Rameses’, the Romanovs, the Assads and the Clintons have in common? They are all family dynasties who, for better or worse, have influenced the history of the world.
Historian and writer Simon Sebag Montefiore is a formidable storyteller, and his detailed and engaging works about historical figures such as Catherine the Great, Stalin and the Romanovs have earned him readers across the globe. In his most recent book, The World – A Family History of Humanity, his focus is no less than the entire world history, told through some of the most central family dynasties.
More than an ambitious and grand project, Montefiore’s latest colossal publication is also an exploration and re-thinking of how we tell history. “World history often has themes, not people; biography has people, not themes,” as he writes in the book’s introduction.
By emphasizing the family, he is able to combine the two – the great historical events with the stories of the people in the midst of it all. He also gives more space to the role of women, and tells parts of the world’s history that might not be as well known among most Norwegian and European readers, such as Sundiata Keita’s kingdom in Mali, Itzcoatl and the founding of the Aztek kingdom, and Ashoka and the Mauyrya empire in ancient India.
Diving into world history with Montefiore on stage is Shazia Majid, award-winning journalist and author of the book Ut av skyggene (“Out of the Shadows”), about the first generation of Pakistani migrant workers in Norway.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Lecture by Denise DeCaires Narain
This lecture introduces two of the most prolific Caribbean women writers, Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid, comparing their distinctive styles and thematic focus. Both writers have spoken of the significance of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in their writing lives and the lecture will explore how this plays out in their work, particularly in their respective engagements with anger and madness.
For many feminist critics, Bertha Mason, Jane Eyre’s “mad woman in the attic, encapsulates the fury of women excluded (or expelled) by patriarchal structures. In this lecture, Denise DeCaires Narain argues that the unique forms that Rhys and Kincaid deploy give shape to that fury in productive and stylish ways.
Denise DeCaires Narain has worked at the University of Sussex for a number of years, where her research has focused especially on Caribbean writers and postcolonial literature. In this lecture, she offers a unique introduction to two of the most prominent writers from the Caribbean: Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese writer, currently living in Scotland. She is the author of six award winning novels, including The Translator (1999), Bird Summons (2019) and River Spirit (2023), as well as a number of plays and short story collections. Aboulela was the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for Fiction, and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
This is Leila Aboulela’s reading list:
- Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King
- Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
The Wedding of Zein
- Naguib Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street)
The Thief and the dogs
- Ahdaf Soueif, In the Eye of the Sun
- Fatin Abbas, Ghost Season
- Isabella Hammad, The Parisian
Enter Ghost
In this podcast series the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their reading list from the African continent and diaspora.
Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Elizabeth Strout is one of the most distinct voices in contemporary American literature, and beloved by readers and critics alike. Her international breakthrough came with the novel Olive Kitteridge, which earned her the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and which was later adapted into the award winning mini series of the same name. Since then, she has written four books in her Lucy Barton series; My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, Oh, William! and Lucy by the Sea.
Her Lucy novels tell stories about exposedness, poverty, grief and childhood trauma, but also about the value of hope, art and love. Lucy grows up in a poor and dysfunctional family in the Illinois countryside and becomes a writer against all odds. Through her village upbringing and different periods in Lucy’s life, the novels depicts her slow awakening as a writer, someone who tells stories, who gives the world meaning through language.
In Strout’s novels and short stories, the great drama unfolds within unassuming everyday life. The emotional lives of ordinary people are portrayed with depth, warmth and complexity, while she simultaneously shows a keen eye for the larger societal structures and systems of which we, consciously or unconsciously, are part.
At the House of Literature, Strout is joined by writer Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold for a conversation about family, community and change.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Elizabeth Strout is one of the most distinct voices in contemporary American literature, and beloved by readers and critics alike. She started writing at an early age, but it would take her many years to finally get published. Back then, her mantra was “just keep going”.
This year, Strout’s debut novel, Amy and Isabelle, is finally available in Norwegian (translated by Hilde Rød-Larsen). Her international breakthrough came with the novel Olive Kitteridge, which earned her the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and which was later adapted into the award-winning mini series of the same name. Since then, she has written four books in her Lucy Barton series; My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, Lucy by the Sea and Oh, William! – which have earned Strout a reputation of an unafraid and deeply thoughtful writer.
«You can’t write fiction and be careful,» Strout has said. Growing up in a small, rural town with a strict family – similarly to her beloved character Lucy Barton – books were miracles and refuges – places in which she realized she was not alone.
In this personal lecture, Strout will talk about her journey from when she first started to write, and to becoming a published author, highlighting some of the authors and books that have shaped and influenced her along the way, such as Alice Munro, Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway. A constant observer of those around her, she will talk about where she finds inspiration for her characters and how she learned to throw caution to the wind.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Writer and therapist Glenn Bech sparked a larger debate about class issues in Denmark with his autobiographical novel The Fathership (forthcoming in Hazel Evans’ translation) and his manifesto Jeg anerkænder ikke længere jeres autoritet (“I no longer recognize your authority”).
The novel The Fathership depicts a brutal childhood characterized by violence, betrayals and toxic masculinity, but that also has a tenderness and love for the families and working class community portrayed. The novel was praised by the literary establishment, and the following year, Bech published Jeg anerkænder ikke længere jeres autoritet (“I no longer recognize your authority”), a furious manifesto about class struggle, the proletariat and the elite. In a self-scrutinizing, loud and emphatic prose, Bech rails against class contempt and the economic blind spots within the cultural middle class, showing the reader what it is like to be exposed, gay and poor.
Masculinity, homophobia and class are central issues in British poet and author Andrew McMillan’s critically acclaimed debut novel Pity. The book portrays three generations of men, spanning from the heyday of the coal industry, with long days of back-breaking labour in the mines, to a present characterized by unemployment and loneliness. In a sparse but urgent tone and with an eye for the raw and vulnerable, McMillan explores today’s gender roles for men, and how the past affects the present. At the same time, the book is a tribute to the working class and an invitation to reflection, change and acceptance.
McMillan and Bech are joined by writer and journalist Kristofer Folkhammar for a conversation about poverty, class and toxic gender roles.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
History is written by the victorious. But do we not also need to hear the story from the other side, from ordinary people caught in the middle of historical upheavals, forced to pick a side, or just try to survive? To those relegated to the footnotes in the history books, or not mentioned at all.
This can be said to be the starting point for the novels of Sudanese-Scottish Leila Aboulela and Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste, both writing about historical events in their home countries.
The backdrop in Aboulela’s new novel River Spirit is the dramatic time in the Sudan’s history in the late 19th century. In the span of just a few years, the country underwent several occupations, as well as a bloody revolution led by a man claiming to be al-Mahdi (the Islamic Messiah). Through a multitude of voices from different sides of the conflicts, and with the young orphaned girl Akuany as a turning point, Aboulela leads us through a central historical time in the Sudan.
A young, poor woman is also central in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King, telling the story of 1935 Ethiopia invaded by Mussolini’s Italy. Told from as different perspectives as Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie, the Italian soldier Ettore and the servant girl Hirut, the novel offers a complex picture of the events. Mengiste has emphasized that she was particularly interested in exploring women’s role in the resistance movement.
Mengiste was born in Ethiopia, and is currently living in the United States. She has explored Ethiopia’s recent history in both her critically acclaimed novels Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King, with the latter shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. Mengiste has also made her mark as a photographer and an essayist.
Aboulela was born in the Sudan, today she lives in Scottland. She has published a number of award winning novels, short story collections and plays. River Spirit is the first novel in a planned series exploring Scotland’s role in the British colonization of the Sudan.
At the House of Literature, Aboulela and Mengiste meet writer and creative director of the Radical Books Collective, Bhakti Shringarpure, for a conversation about writing historical fiction, and about foregrounding the stories of women and ordinary people within big historical events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The year is 1949, and the state of Israel is in its infancy. In the Negev desert, bordering Egypt, Israeli armed forces have set up camp with the mission to “cleanse it of any remaining Arabs” after the war the preceding year. They happen upon a Beduin family, a teenage girl among them, whom the soldiers rape, kill and bury in the desert.
In present-day Ramallah, a young woman discovers these events through a small newspaper story. It catches her attention because the events took place exactly 25 years before the day she was born. The woman becomes compelled to find out what actually happened in that desert, and embarks upon a highly dangerous journey to come to the bottom of the story.
Adania Shibli is a critically acclaimed Palestinian writer, and holds a PhD in media and cultural studies. She has published three novels in Arabic, and Minor Detail is the first to be translated into Norwegian. While slim in size, the novel contains far more than the modest number of pages would suggest. Shibli explores themes such as belonging and loss, depicting the everyday absurdities under a normalized occupation. Shibli’s language is precise and sparse, the story concise. The many gaps in the story creates a tension, quivering beneath the surface and increasing by each page.
The novel was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, and in 2023, it won the prestigious German LiBeraturpreis. However, they chose to postpone the award ceremony indefinitely after Hamas’s terror attack on October 7th and Israel’s following war on Gaza, a decision met with extensive criticism internationally.
At the House of Literature, Shibli will meet writer colleague Maaza Mengiste for a conversation about language, the past, borders and all the minor details that make up our reality.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Freedom of expression is never absolute, but subject to laws and social conventions. Threats to freedom of thought and speech can come directly from authoritarian states or religious institutions. But they can also be self-inflicted, in the form of self-censorship. Both forms of censorship exist in democracies as well as dictatorship, and often overlap.
Throughout history, authors in particular have been made the object of the limitations set by powerful institutions, be it by explicit decree or through the trepidations felt at writing challenging or shocking literature.
Few know this landscape better than historian, author and critic Ian Buruma. He has written a host of books on East Asian (especially Chinese and Japanese) culture and history, the West and Islam, and European history, including this year’s The Collaborators. Buruma is also highly respected columnist and critic for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, the latter of which he also served as editor-in-chief.
This evening, Buruma will give an introductory lecture on how censorship has shaped culture and the arts in both Eastern and Western countries, before being interviewed by author and professor of cultural history at the University of Oslo, Helge Jordheim. He will join Buruma on stage for a conversation on how threats to expression have changed over time, and the challenges that writers face today.
This event marks the beginning of The House of Literature’s series on “Forbidden books”, which sheds light on the ways in which literature is made forbidden, censored, or otherwise suppressed, historically and today.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The year is 1995, and 16 year old Shy is sneaking out of the rural boarding school for “difficult” boys, named “Last Chance”. A long history of petty crime, expulsions and frustrated family members has brought him here, but now it is all soon over. With a spliff in his pocket and his Walkman loaded with his drum ‘n’ bass favourites, he’s ready. His rucksack is filled with rocks, and his head is swimming with memories of all his failures and times he fucked it up.
Shy is a compositionally ambitious and lyrical character study with troubled youth as its subject. Through frequent flashbacks and interjections, Shy provides us with glimpses of a difficult childhood leading to a young man at the verge of self-annihilation. Shy is a tender story of depression and not being able to fit in, told with great compassion and nuance. At the same time, the novel is a fervent ode to the outsiders of the 90s and to the culture and music that embraced them, those who no one else wanted.
Max Porter is a British author and editor at the publishing house Granta. With his experimental and innovative novels, in particular Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, he has established himself as one of his generation’s most exciting voices and acquired a large readership among critics and with the general public. Even other writers like Douglas Stuart, PJ Harvey and George Saunders have expressed their admiration for Porter and his trilogy of novels on boyhood, which Shy now completes.
Another writer who has followed Porter’s career with curiosity and excitement is Norwegian author and editor at Tiden, Mattis Øybø. He will meet Porter for a conversation on Shy, masculinity and how best to bring the outsiders back in.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Do you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth.
The Vietnam war was a watershed event in the Cold War as well as in the West’s understanding of itself. But what does the story look like from a Vietnamese perspective?
In Vietnam, the war is still a traumatic experience. This is what writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai explores in her novel The Mountains Sing, in which we alternately follow the girl Huong and her grandmother Diệu Lan.
While the rest of the family has been scattered across the country, Huong and Diệu Lan tries to make it through the days with the help of stories. Huong disappears into books like Pinocchio and Treasure Island, or listens to her grandmother sharing her life story, where Nguyễn takes us through the history of Vietnam in the last hundred years, from a colony under Japan and the brutal reforms of the communist regime in the 1950s and through the horrific years of the Vietnam war. Is reconciliation at all possible after decades of abuse and with families torn apart?
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has published a number of poetry collections in Vietnamese, and in The Mountains Sing, her first novel in English, this background from poetry is clearly visible. She balances the dark story with a vivid and lyrical language, and through the novel’s chorus of voices, she challenges the black and white picture we know from history books and Hollywood movies. The novel has been met with critical acclaim, and won her the International Book Award and the PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Award.
When Nguyễn visited the House of Literature, she was joined by translator and artistic advisor for the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Yukiko Duke, for a conversation about memories, reconciliation and Vietnam’s bloody history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In some other world, in some other life, Pinto might’ve prayed in the morning, prayed his šaharit, prayed to be relieved of his abhorrent passion. But the only prayer that came to his mind now was to the Lord to let him keep Osman for the rest of time, for his voice to be the last thing he would hear before slipping into la gran eskuridad.
Rafael Pinto is a young Jewish apothecary in Sarajevo, Bosnia, with big dreams and a penchant for opium. One summer day in 1914 he witnesses the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suddenly Pinto is thrust into life as a soldier in the Great War. There he meets Osman, a handsome Muslim soldier who charms Pinto with his bravery and talent for storytelling, and between them blossoms a boundless love which shall follow them through the war and to the ends of the Earth.
Aleksandar Hemon’s The World and All That It Holds is a grandiose historical novel that combines historical fact with a rich and fabulous prose. With events set in a multicultural Europe in great social upheaval, Hemon deploys a distinctly lyrical prose, mixing in languages and expressions from all corners and cultures, showing a broad history and a multiform world. The result is a highly original, yet archetypal story of undying love and one man’s fight to save something worth living for as the world as he knows it is collapsing around him.
Bosnian American Aleksander Hemon is one of the most central authors of his generation. With novels such as The Lazarus Project and Nowhere Man, alongside his many short stories, Hemon has written himself into the contemporary American canon and garnered readers all over the world. This year, he returns with The World and All That It Holds, perhaps his most ambitious project yet.
In conversation with Hemon is renowned author, critic, and editor John Freeman. He has long followed Hemon’s career as a writer and metHemon on stage for a conversation on love in wartime and the explosive power of literature.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A masseuse who rises in the ranks to become Himmler’s confidant. A cross-dressing princess who spies for Japanese secret police in China. A Dutch Jew who personally hands over his friends to the Nazis and the gas chambers.
The Collaborators is the story of three most unusual lives, all of whom served the other side during World War II. But it is also the story of their legacies and the ways in which the writing of history can become the falsification of history: The Dutchman and the spy were both remembered as martyrs, while the masseuse was awarded the Red Cross Medal barely three years after the end of the war.
Why were these people exempted from post-war reckoning and social stigma? How are they remembered today, and what do they tell us about how history is written and remembered?
Ian Buruma is a Dutch historian, author and professor of human rights and journalism. In over four decades he has written popular and respected books on culture and history, with special emphasis on Europe, Japan and China. With books such as Year Zero. A History of 1945 and The Wages of Guilt. Memories of War in Germany and in Japan, Buruma has explored Western and Eastern history writing and mythologisation of traitors and interlopers. The Collaborators adds to this with its empathic and well-written portrait of three complex characters from the Second World War.
Journalist and author Marte Michelet put the question of guilt among Norway’s resistance movement on the agenda with her book What Did the Home Front Know?, which became the centre of much debate. She has read and enjoyed the Collaborators and met Buruma on stage for a conversation on injustice, guilt, and the writing of history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the novel Glory, we find ourselves in the fictional country Jidada, which is peopled with all kinds of animals; bleating sheep, a confident pig preacher, vicious dogs making up the country’s security forces, and at the very top: the Old Horse, who has ruled the country with an iron hoof ever since independence. He is «the longest-serving leader in a continent of long-serving leaders, and indeed in the whole wide world».
Author NoViolet Bulawayo has drawn inspiration both from George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm and the African tradition of animal fables in her allegorical story of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s fall.
In a bubbling and playful language, where satirical quips, twitter updates and razor sharp observations all follow each other, Bulawayo tells the story of the coup against Mugabe as it plays out among the animals on the Seat of Power as well as among the public. Through the goat Destiny, returned after years in exile, we get an outsider’s view on the events, and in a vivid mother-daughter portrait, we follow Destiny and her mother in a journey back to a part of the country’s bloody history that has long been silenced.
The result is a masterly satirical story in which Bulawayo explores universal themes such as freedom and repression, hope and justice, showing us how the story is relevant far beyond the borders of Zimbabwe, in a world where authoritarianism is on the rise.
Writer NoViolet Bulawayo is the first African woman to appear on the prestigious Booker list twice, first for her 2013 debut We Need New Names and then for her second novel Glory in 2022. She has taught creative writing at Stanford for many years, and her own writing has earned her a number of prizes and accolades.
At the House of Literature, Bulawayo was joined by poet and writer Priya Bains for a conversation about fables and animals, literary playfulness, and Zimbabwe’s recent history.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and is frequently cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. It is truly a momentous occasion that Oates will visit the House of Literature, and in doing so will be visiting Norway for the very first time.
Through more than one hundred books spanning most genres, the American legend writes tenderly and with precision about our societies’ great questions.
«The opposite of language is silence and silence for human beings is death», Oates said after receiving the prestigious National Book Award for her 1969 novel Them. The novel is considered one of her major works, and will now be available in Norwegian translation for the first time. In Them, we follow a forking class family living under harsh conditions in Detroit, from the 1930s and until the bloody race riots in 1967.
Oates has also written fiction based on real events or people, such as her best-selling novel Blonde, based on Marilyn Monroe’s life and death, which was adapted into a film in 2022. Her latest novel, Babysitter, is set in the aftermath of a number of unsolved child-killings in Detroit in the 1970s. Here, Oates explores racism, sexual harassment and institutional abuse in ways that make the story feel deeply relevant, even to today’s society marked by MeToo and Black Lives Matter.
The core of her writing, according to Oates herself, is to “be a witness” – to tell the stories of those who have no one speaking for them. She writes about racism, misogyny, violence and social injustices with a keen eye for politics and history, combined with deep psychological insight and literary precision.
Oates has won a number of literary prizes for her extensive body of work. She has been a professor of creative writing at Princeton University and UC Berkeley for many years and a central literary mentor for writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Mohsin Hamid.
When the author visits Norway and the House of Literature for the very first time, the event will take place in the University of Oslo’s ceremonial hall, so that as many people as possible can take part in the event. Here, she will meet writer and journalist Karin Haugen for a conversation about a long writing life and the power of literature.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African-born writer to receive the award in close to 20 years. The Swedish Academy awarded Gurnah the prize «for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents».
Across the world, more and more readers are discovering Gurnah’s body of work. His novels Paradise, Afterlives and Desertion explore the history of East Africa and Zanzibar, while other works, such as Admiring Silence and By the Sea, portray a migrant’s encounter with British society. What they all have in common are the memorable characters created by Gurnah, characters that are not heroes, but rather unique in their quiet everydayness, and who often feel alienated from the world around them.
Through these characters, Gurnah gives us masterful depictions of a region and its history, of the colonial era, of exile and migration. In a quiet revolution, he shifts the perspective from the familiar, Western narrative to an East African point of view, leading us into great history as seen through the eyes of ordinary people.
“Gurnah’s novels are stunningly beautiful, immersive and enticing. He exceeds all others in depicting the lives of those made small by injustice and oppression”, writer Leila Aboulela has said about Gurnah’s writing, with which she has a strong connection. Aboulela grew up in Sudan, and currently lives in Scotland. She has published a number of plays, short story collections and novels, most recently River Spirit.
Aboulela will join Abdulrazak Gurnah for a conversation about his body of work, about writing the history of East Africa, migration, colonial history, and the unique portraits of characters and relationships he gives us in his books.
The event was supported by Norad.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Do artists have a social responsibility? Should art be «pure» and not related to ethical or political issues? What, exactly, is the role of art? These are questions that the American author Joyce Carol Oates has dealt with through a long writing life, both as an author and as a professor in creative writing at University of Princeton and UC Berkeley.
Oates is a legend, and the author of more than 100 books. Known for memorable titles such as Blond, Them, Black Water, The Gravedigger’s Daughter, We Were the Mulvaneys and Babysitter. She has been a consistent favorite for the Nobel Prize of literature the last 25 years, and has been a mentor to writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Mohsin Hamid. In this lecture, Oates talks about the role of art and that of inspiration and the wellspring of creativity, examined through the work of contemporary writers and poets.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Masande Ntshanga is a writer and poet, an editor of New Contrast Magazine and a teacher of creative writing. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by an African. His latest book is the 2020 chapbook Native Life in the Third Millennium.
This is Masande's reading list:
Imraan Coovadia, Tales of the Metric System
A Spy in Time
K. Sello Duiker, The Quiet Violence of Dreams
Njabulo Ndebele, Fools and Other Stories
In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.
Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Maaza Mengiste is a writer, photographer and teacher of creative fiction at Wesleyan University. Her 2010 debut novel, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, depicts the bloody revolution in 1970s Ethiopia, and was named one of the 10 Best Contemporary African Books by the Guardian. Her second novel The Shadow King, portraying the Italo-Ethiopian war of the 1930s, was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker prize in 2020.
This is Maaza Mengiste’s reading list:
- Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy
- Maya Binyam, Hangman
- Mihret Sibhat, The History of a Difficult Child
- Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.
Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
The year is 2043, and an astronomer at the South-African Space Agency receives a package filled with documents, which contain a warning that the earth will end in 10 years.
The documents are diary entries and audio tapes by a girl, relaying first her adolescence in the 1990s, when she explores her sexuality and tries to find her mother, who disappeared without a trace when she was little, and then moving to her daily life as an adult.
Through the history of the girl, we see how South-Africa’s dark past is still shaping its present, and mirrored in a dystopian future, where environmental issues are rampant, and social issues is solved by creating work camps across the country.
In his novel Triangulum, Masande Ntshanga combines different genres in a story which illustrates, convincingly, that South-Africa’s dystopian past is far from a closed chapter.
Ntshanga is the author of two novels and a chapbook. His debut The Reactive won him the debut prize the Betty Trask Award, while Triangulum was nominated for the Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by and African.
At the House of Literature, Ntshanga is joined by editor and translator Julia Wiedlocha for a conversation about adolescence and technology, future dystopias, and the dark shadow of colonialism.
The event is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
«I’ve always found Science Fiction to be a form that’s irrevocably linked to critiques of power and societal structures,» writer Masande Ntshanga has said. During his adolescence, he read a lot of science fiction, and his latest novel, Triangulum, makes use of several elements from the genre.
Science fiction, speculative fiction and afrofuturism are literary genres on the rise on many countries, including Norway and Ntshanga’s home country, South Africa. What makes science fiction the preferred genre in which to explore possible future scenarios, or in which to pick apart contemporary power structures?
In this personal lecture, Ntshanga will talk about what science fiction literature has meant to him as a reader and writer, and about the significance of the genre for writers who want to imagine another world.
Masande Ntshanga is a South African writer, poet and editor of New Contrast Magazine. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by an African.
What is transgender literature? Is it simply works by writers who identify as transgender? Or might it be thought of as a lens to read through, or a certain kind of attention? If it is the latter: in what tradition might we locate transgender literature?
In this talk, American author Torrey Peters will argue for finding the roots of current transfeminine literature in older works that explore the performance of masculinity, works that in fact have been popularly accepted as containing little ambivalence about the meanings of gender. The primary focus will be on Ernest Hemingway, but with slight detours into Per Petterson, Thomas Mann, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Evelyn Waugh, and the pharmacology of steroid regimens taken by extreme bodybuilders.
Torrey Peters rocketed into the international literary scene with her debut novelDetransition, Baby, a warm and intelligent exploration of gender, parenthood and trans life. The novel was among other prizes nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and is celebrated for its complex trans characters and for painting a truthful picture of the New York trans scene.
Torrey Peters rocketed into the international literary scene with her debut novel Detransition, Baby, the first novel written by a trans woman to become an international best seller. Peters explores the complexeties of trans life, and compares transitioning to cis women starting over after a divorce: Everything you thought you knew about the future has to be scrapped, and you have to create a new identity that society doesn’t have any rules for.
The novel portrays Reese, a trans woman who always wanted children, her transgendered ex-partner Ames and his pregnant girlfriend. Can the three of them be parents together, and if so, what would that look like? Who are their role models? How can trans women creates good lives, when so many aspects of ordinary life are still unavailable to them?
Detransition, Baby, now available in Kirsti Vogt’s Norwegian transalation, gives a unique insight into the everyday dilemmas trans people meet. The novel was among other prizes nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and is celebrated for its complex trans characters and for painting a truthful picture of the New York trans scene.
Author and literary critic Carline Tromp will meet Peters for a conversation about gender, sexuality, family, and starting over.
The conversation will start with an introduction by Christine Marie Jentoft, adviser for gender diversity at FRI, who has been an important voice in the Norwegian trans debate for over 10 years. She received an honorary prize from PKI in 2022 for her work for equality for the lgbt+ community, and was elected Queer Role Model of the year during the 2023 Rainbow Galla.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
«Every time we say it can’t get any worse it does,» writer Tsitsi Dangarembga has said about the situation in her home country Zimbabwe.
The UNs special envoy has reacted to the arbitrary arrests of activists and politicians from the opposition. Last year, Dangarembga was herself convicted after partaking in a peaceful protest with one other activist in 2020. While large parts of the middle class and cultural elite has left Zimbabwe, Dangarembga has staid put and fought for change. Now she debates moving countries.
Across the world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to protest governments and large corporations. Environmental activists are especially vulnerable: According to the human rights organization Global Witness, 200 environmental activists were murdered across the world in 2021 alone.
In 2016, South African activist Nonhle Mbuthuma lost a close friend and colleague. Ever since, she has lived with constant death threats in her work to protect the nature and community where she lives, on the east coast of South Africa.
Mbuthuma and Dangarembga will join for a conversation about the conditions for human rights and civil society in Zimbabwe and South Africa. How do you keep fighting for grass roots engagement and change under such perilous conditions?
Moderating the conversation is Bergdís Jóelsdóttir. She has worked with civil society and human rights initiatives in Southern Africa for a number of years, and is currently the policy director for Amnesty International Norway.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Just weeks after the historical film Ellos Eatnu/Let the River Flow had premiered, lead actress and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen was back in chains – for real, this time. Together with fellow Sami activists, she barricaded the Department of Oil and Energy, to protest that the authorities have done nothing in the 500 days since Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that the wind park in Fosen violates the human rights of Sami reindeer herders in the area.
South African Nonhle Mbuthuma has also fought for her people’s land and rights. Together with her community, the indigenous group in Pondoland, she took the Australian mining company Transworld Energy and Minerals to court – and won.
Hætta Isaksen and Mbuthuma both fight a double fight, for nature and for indigenous people’s right to their culture and traditions. For many indigenous activists, the environmental struggle is seen as an integrated part of the fight against extractivism – extracting natural resources for export and sale – and that against colonialism.
For Mbuthuma, her fight is a continuation of earlier generations’ fight for the same land, against colonial powers and the apartheid state. Mbuthuma is the founder of the organization Amadiba Crisis Committee, which is fighting for the land and community in Pondoland on the east coast of South Africa.
Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen is an activist, a musician with her band Isák, and an actress.
When the two of them meet for a conversation about environmental struggle and indigenous rights, they are joined by Silje Ask Lundberg, former president of Friends of the Earth Norway and a senior campaigner for the organization Oil Change International.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Through more than 30 years, Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga has made her mark as a writer and director. With her trilogy of novels following Tambu, she portrays a period of upheaval for her home country, from life under the colonial regime of Rhodesia to the struggle for freedom and the disillusioned everyday life after independence.
Her debut novel Nervous Conditions was not only the first novel in English published by a Black woman in Zimbabwe, it has become a modern classic, and in 2018, it figured on BBC’s “100 books that changed the world”. That same year, the third book in the trilogy, This Mournable Body, was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker prize.
But it was not a given that Dangarembga would end up in this position, and at one point, it seemed she would not be able to publish her first book at all. In her recent essay collection Black and Female, Dangarembga connects the personal and the political in her recount of how she has been forced into a constant uphill battle to be heard, as a Black person and as a woman.
At the House of Literature, Dangarembga will meet Ethiopian Maaza Mengiste in conversation. Mengiste is the author of several critically acclaimed novels portraying the history of Ethiopia, and she has named Dangarembga as one of her literary inspirations.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A young girl from a poor family fighting to get the education she wants, but which is primarily reserved for her brother. A beautiful and worldly friend who brings her out of her shell. The history of a region told through the childhood of a young girl.
This could be the description of Elena Ferrante’s Naples Quartet, but in fact it describes the trilogy of Tsitsi Dangarembga, began several decades earlier.
In this trilogy, we follow the young girl Tambudzai from her childhood in colonised Rhodesia, through adolescence during the liberation war to the young woman attempting to carve out a life for herself in an independent, but disillusioned, Zimbabwe.
How are these novels read today? And why is it that many of the most central authors from the African continent are still unfamiliar to many European readers?
Dangarembga has made her mark as a writer for more than 30 years. In 2021, she was the eighth writer to be included in the art project The Future Library in Oslo, and this Spring, she was awarded the Freedom of Expression Prize from the Norwegian Writers Union. Her novels have become modern classics, and a number of writers have been inspired by her nuanced portraits of a young girl, by how she renders girls’ and women’s fight for equal rights and how she tells the recent story of Zimbabwe through her fiction.
One of the writers inspired by Dangarembga’s fiction, is Ethiopian Maaza Mengiste. She has also employed the novel to tell the story of a country in her books Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King.
Marjam Idriss is the author of the novel Jannikeevangeliet («The Gospel of Jannike»), a literary critic and a translator of names such as Audre Lorde and Amanda Gorman. This Spring, she has delved into Dangarembga’s body of work.
Tonje Vold is a professor at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo. She wrote her thesis about Tsitsi Dangarembga, and her research has focused especially on postcolonial literature and literature from Southern Africa.
Moderating the conversation is writer and former artistic director at the House of Literature, Andreas Liebe Delsett.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jamaica Kincaid is one of the greatest authors of feminist and postcolonial literature of our time. In her handful of novels and a collection of short stories, she has portrayed themes such as structural racism, otherness and mother-daughter relationships with soberness and astonishing clarity. She has emerged as a favourite among readers and critics alike, and is increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In Lucy, a young woman travels from a Caribbean island to an American metropolis to work as an au pair for a wealthy family. Her new home offers culture shocks in the form of the new climate and city life, but also in the form of visible class differences and racism. Trapped in hierarchy and gender norms, Lucy feels isolated and alone, and must figure out how yet to grow as a person and live a meaningful life.
Speaking with Kincaid is journalist and feminist bookshop founder Ida Pallin Bostadløkken. She has devoured Kincaid’s works with eagerness and joy, and March 15, 2023, the two met on our stage for a conversation about Lucy, identity and belonging.
“How will you show the destroyed city?”
The Trofymchuks live in a small city in Donbas’ “Red Zone”, Ukraine, which since Russia’s invasion in 2014 has seen frequent shellings and the breakdown of infratructure. They plan to make a film showing their new daily life, and at the dinner table discuss how best to capture the destruction, uncertainty and despair that the war has brought. Just as important is the question of how to show the joys, resilience and community in their neighbourhood and in the family, even in the most dire of circumstances. What is the power of art in a world filled with horrors and absurdities?
In the documentary The Earth is Blue as an Orange (2020), filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk follows the Trofymchuks through one year of living on the frontline of the war, documenting their wish to tell the story of their city. This way, she also portrays the many thousands of families in Ukraine trying to keep hold of the brighter spots in an otherwise dark time.
Iryna Tsilyk is a Ukrainian critically acclaimed filmmaker, author, poet and translator. In over 15 years she has been writing and producing films about the effects of war on civilians, among other things, especially on women and families. The Earth is Blue as an Orange has won a host of awards for its direction and cinematography, which manages to bring the viewer close to the heart of this extraordinarily resilient family.
In conversation with Tsilyk is author Åsne Seierstad. She has written an array of documentary books that show the effects of war and conflict, by getting close to affected individuals, most recently in the critically acclaimed The Afghans. She meets Tsilyk for a conversation on family, Ukraine and the role of art in wartime.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As a little girl, Lea Ypi regarded Stalin and Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha as dependable father figures, she liked how her teacher Nora har simple answers to everything, and what she wanted most of all, was to be named a pioneer. But when the communist regime falls in 1991, the young Lea suddenly realizes that nothing is truly like she thought. Has her whole life been a lie?
In her memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, Ypi depicts an unusual childhood: Before she came of age, she had lived trough a communist regime and its fall, the neoliberal society that succeeded it, as well as a ghastly civil war. With acute awareness, attention to detail and no small amount of wit, Ypi offers her reader a unique insight into Albania’s recent history and contention between ideologies and political and economic interests.
With her childhood in Albania, Lea Ypi is today a professor of political theory at London School of Economics, where she, among other things, teaches Marxism. Her memoir Free was awarded the Ondaatje prize and named one of the best books of 2022 by both The New Yorker and Fincancial Times.
At the House of Literature, Ypi will be joined in conversation by Marianne Marthinsen. Marthinsen is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Her background is from Norway’s Worker’s Youth League and the Labour Party, which she represented in parliament between 2005 and 2021. Today, she works for Finance Norway.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The world in which we live is by and large designed and built for “the ideal man”: The size of cell phones, seat belts in cars, the development of medication – there are countless examples. And most of this we take for granted, that is how used we are, both women and men, to men being the norm, the universal form.
If something is to change in the world that is constantly overlooking women, we have to first be aware that this is happening, says writer Caroline Criado Perez. In her book Invisible Women, she lets the numbers speak for her: Data and statistics from all areas of society and a number of countries all show the same picture. “When we see it, we see it. But someone has to point it out to us,” Linn Stalsberg writes in an essay about invisible women in Agenda Magasin. And Criado Perez points it out to us. Where do we go from here? What would change in design and politics if the world started including the experiences of women?
Criado Perez is a critically acclaimed writer, journalist, and activist from the UK, where she has campaigned for women to be featured on British banknotes, and for statues of suffragettes to be erected.
Linn Stalsberg is a journalist and writer of titles such as Det er nok nå (“Enough now”) and Etter pandemien (“After the pandemic”).
This evening, Criado Perez will give an introduction to her project to reveal the male norm governing our everyday lives, before joining Stalsberg in conversation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
It is a rare occation when the author of cult books such as American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction releases his first novel in 13 years. For readers of Bret Easton Ellis’s earlier books, The Shards has a familiar atmosphere, and he doesn’t shy away from explicit descriptions of sex or violence.
We are in early 80s LA, and the main character, Bret Ellis, is 17 and a senior at the prestigious private school Buckley. A charming new student in class challenges Bret’s attempt to hide his attraction to men.
But something darks lurks beneath the glossy surface. The story is told by a now middle aged Bret revisiting the fatal senior year when a serial killer appeared in LA. Leafing through his old yearbook, he notices the five classmates that are missing.
Ellis likes to provoke, both in fiction and in public debate. The Shards is no exception. First published in serial format on Ellis’s own podcast, the story is passed off as a memoir based on Ellis’s own experiences, much like the earlier Lunar Park. As the serial killer moves ever closer to Bret’s circle, the book also describes Bret’s sexual and literary awakening, making it as much a story of the author’s journey into writing.
When Ellis visits the House of Literature for the first time, he is joined on stage by Emma Clare Gabrielsen. She has worked for many years as a journalist in Natt & Dag, DN and Norwegian broadcasting NRK, where her documentary on pedophiles earned her nominations for both Norway's premier journalist prize and Prix Europe's "European Journalist of the Year".
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The young girl Hirut starts working for a wealthy couple, but is soon brought into their many quarrels, their jealousy and grief over the loss of a child. This is Ethiopia in the 1930s. Things go from bad to worse when Italy, led by Mussolini, invades the country, and Hirut’s master is tasked with organizing an opposition army. His wife refuses to wait at home for him, and creates her own force, made up by women. In the capital, emperor Selassie attempts to shut out the dire situation through the sound of opera.
In her novel The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste takes as her starting point a central chapter in the history of Ethiopia , as well as her own family history. She invites us into the realities of the servant Hirut and her madame, but also that of the army leader Kidane, the Italian soldier Ettore and the emperor Haile Selassie. The result is a polyphonic novel that broadens our perceptions of the Ethiopian-Italian war and the lives of human beings in this great history.
Mengiste was born in Ethiopia, but her family left the country in the late 70s, during the Ethiopian revolution, which is central in her debut novel Beneath the Lion’s Gaze. Both her debut and The Shadow King has received great critical acclaim, and been translated into numerous languages.
Sofi Oksanen has, like Mengiste, created fiction from historical events, such as a Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe during the second world war in her novels Purge and Stalin’s Cows. Here, too, the experiences of women are central to the stories.
Now, both Ethiopia and Ukraine are at war again. Sofi Oksanen will join Maaza Mengiste for a conversation about the role of literature in helping us understand history and the times we live in.
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an author, screenwriter, and former head of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In 2003, the Kenyan won the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her 2013 debut novel, Dust, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. In 2015, Owuor visited the House of Literature, a visit that resulted in the Norwegian publication of Dust. The critically acclaimed The Dragonfly Sea followed in 2019. These authors are on Yvonnes reading list:
- Makena Onjerica
- Oduor Okwiri
- Dennis Mugaa
- Idza Luhumyo
- Troy Onyango
- Remy Ngamije
- Gloria Mwanige
- Kwame Nyongo
- Aleya Kassam
In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.
Interviewer in this episode Nosizwe Lise Baqwa
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nadifa Mohamed is the writer of three novels, with the two first, Black Mamba and The Orchard of Lost Souls available in Norwegian translation so far. In 2017, Mohamed participated in The House of Literature’s festival on Somali literature, A nation of poets. During the pandemic, she interviewed Arundhati Roy and Édouard Louis for the House of Literature and Linn Ullmann’s podcast How to Proceed. In 2013, she appeared on Granta’s list of best young British writers. Mohamed’s latest novel, The Fortune Men, was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize in 2021. Mohamed teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway University in London. This is Nadifas reading list.
- Allah is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma, translation by Frank Wynne, Heinemann. (2006) (originally in French 2000)
- Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma, translation by Frank Wynne, Heinemann (2003)(originally in French 1998)
- Home to Harlem by Claude Mckay (1928)
- Banjo by Claude Mckay (1929)
- Romance in Marseille by Claude Mckay(2020)(1933)
- Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude Mckay (2017) (1941)
In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.
Host in this episode Åshild Lappegård Lahn
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an author, screenwriter, and former head of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In 2003, the Kenyan won the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her 2013 debut novel, Dust, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. In 2015, Owuor visited the House of Literature, a visit that resulted in the Norwegian publication of Dust. The critically acclaimed The Dragonfly Sea followed in 2019. These authors are on Yvonnes reading list:
- Makena Onjerica
- Oduor Okwiri
- Dennis Mugaa
- Idza Luhumyo
- Troy Onyango
- Remy Ngamije
- Gloria Mwanige
- Kwame Nyongo
- Aleya Kassam
In this podcastseries the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway invites writers and thinkers to talk about their work, what they read and present their readinglist from the African continent and diaspora.
Interviewer in this episode Nosizwe Lise Baqwa
Editing and production by the House of Literature
Music by Ibou Cissokho
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Promise follows the white South-African Swart family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The story follows the nuclear family through the waning years of the apartheid state, through the 1994 liberation and until the children are grown, close to our time.
Galgut’s story glides through the decades of South Africa’s recent history, weaving in and out between the various family members, often changing the perspective mid-sentence from one to another, or to the mildly sarcastic narrator. It is a story about a family’s decline, and about how life largely continues unchanged for the white minority in South-Africa.
Damon Galgut is the author of a number of award winning novels and plays, including The Good Doctor, Arctic Summer and In a Strange Room.
At the House of Literature, he was joined by political scientist and artist Nosizwe Lise Baqwa for a conversation about broken promises and a white, South-African family in decline.
The House of Literature’s project to promote African literature is supported by NORAD
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Warsan Shire is a critically acclaimed and award winning British poet. In 2016, the artist Beyoncé named her one of her favorite poets, and she appears both on the album «Lemonade» and in the film «Black Is King». In 2014, she was the first poet named Young Poet Laureate of London.
Shire, born to Somali parents in Kenya and raised in Great Britain, has said that she draws on her own experiences as an immigrant, as well as those of her family and friends in what she writes. Shire has published two chap books, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body as well as one full-length poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice In Her Head. Her poetry explores themes such as girlhood, mothers and daughters, black identity, migration, family and faith in a striking language, interspersed with both references to pop culture and phrases in Somali.
Athena Farrokhzad is a Swedish poet and writer, best known for her debut collection Vitsvit (White Blight), about migration, whiteness and violence. At the Hourse of Literature she joined Shire for a conversation about poetry, marginalized people and their experiences.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Édouard Louis 2022: In a world dominated by state narratives and information wars, what is the role of the writer?
Power imbalances, exploitation and the dark history of Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe are among the recurring themes in the works of Finnish-Estonian writer and playwright Sofi Oksanen. Her blend of surrealist elements and real-world political plotlines allow for a literary exploration of where political power has been focused historically and where it lies today.
Édouard Louis has long been an admirer of Oksanen’s works. The two authors are also politically active in their home countries, and now meet for a conversation on speaking (and writing) truth to power. What does it mean to be a political writer?
The conversation will be moderated by Ane Farsethås, critic, author, and cultural editor in Morgenbladet.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Édouard Louis 2022: Alan Hollinghurst and Édouard Louishave long read each other’s books with great interest. While Louis has written brutally honest depictions of growing up gay in a homophobic family and environment, Hollinghurst’s fiction explores gay culture and experience through the decades, including the AIDS crisis and gay life prior to decriminalization in the UK. While Norway marks 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalized this year, LGBT rights are being curbed around the world, and this year’s Oslo Pride ended in a fatal shooting. In such a climate, is the gay writer forced into an activist role by virtue of their being gay? Is there a pressure to represent when writing from a minority perspective? In this conversation, Hollinghurst and Louis will talk about their relationship to each other’s books, about the role of gay literature and the plight of the gay writer. Leading the conversation is Knut Olav Åmås, director of the Free Word Foundation.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Édouard Louis 2022: In his most recent book, Changer : méthode, Édouard Louis shows just how indebted he is, as a writer and thinker, to the works of the French academic and author Didier Eribon. Ever since seeing him lecture early in his life, Louis and Eribon have developed a deep understanding of the other’s works and ideas, with Eribon’s novel Retour à Reims even providing the foundation for Louis’ debut novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule. In this talk, Eribon gives us his view on Louis’ authorship and explores the many ways in which his literature overlaps with the political and translates to real political power.
Didier Eribon is a French philosopher, author and historian, and has written many highly acclaimed works on class, homosexuality, psychoanalysis and Michel Foucault, among other subjects.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Édouard Louis 2022: A lecture by Maaza Mengiste, introduction by Édouard Louis. What is the responsibility of the writer in documenting and unpicking the violence around us? In Édouard Louis’s book The History of Violence, he explores violence from the point of view of the victim of rape and attempted murder, but also the violence that the perpetrator has experienced from society. In the novels Beneath the Lion’s Gaze and The Shadow King, about the bloody Ethiopian revolution and Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, Maaza Mengiste has herself explored forms of violence – both on an individual level and on the level of society.
In this personal lecture, Mengiste will talk about her relationship to Louis’s novel and give us her own reflections on the writer’s place in a violent world.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Édouard Louis 2022: A young gay person escapes their small town in search of friendship and love in the big city. A recurring theme as much in real life as in literature.
In his most recent book, Change: Method, Édouard Louis delves deeper into his own journey – as told in The End of Eddy – from his poor upbringing and to the cultural elite in Paris, and the deliberate steps he took along the way to reinvent himself.
In writing the book, Louis was deeply inspired by Alan Hollinghurst’s award winning novel The Line of Beauty. Both books follows a gay protagonist trying to fit in within a different class than the one they were born into.
Alan Hollinghurst is the author novels such as The Line of Beauty, The Stranger’s Childand The Sparsholt Affair.
In this personal lecture, he shares his reading of Change: Method and reflections on shared themes such as class, culture and sexuality.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This lecture was held on November 18th at The House of Literature in Norway, during their three days of conversations, lectures, and events fromÉdouard Louis’ writing and works.The lecture was written for this occasion and centres around Louis’ recent experience of losing his older brother.
Few writers have championed the working class like Édouard Louis. In each of his five novels, he portrays the struggles and aspirations of an often undermined and ignored group, exemplified by a family member or himself. His literature concerns itself with the psychological obstacles to self-fulfilment and shows how the strongest contempt for the working class is often held by the people within it. Louis was also vocal in supporting the Yellow Vests movement in 2018.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In Checkout 19 Claire-Louise Bennett writes about the joy of reading, about when fiction becomes so vividly alive that you take it with you into the real world. Through a series of chapters - told in I-, she- and even we-form - we follow the main character's development from a little girl to an adult woman, through childhood, promiscuity and bad boyfriends. At the same time, there is a development from reader to author, but not without a series of derailments and tortuous detours: A meeting with a customer at the supermarket becomes the starting point for a detailed story about his background. An early self-written story emerges in the strangest directions. Claire-Louise Bennett's language is a cornucopia, and in a playful and original way she takes us into her rich and curious world.
This conversation took place at the House of Literature in Oslo. On stage Bennet was joined by the Norwegian author and poet Amalie Kasin Lerstang.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What is life like for young and regime-critical Russians today? Kira Yarmysh is best known in Russia as spokeswoman for the Russian oppositional politician Alexei Navalny. Now her debut novel Incredible Incidents in Women's Cell No. 3 is making headlines. In Russia, the book was quickly branded as "gay propaganda" by Russian authorities, due to depictions of same-sex love. Throughout the book, Yarmysh depicts a modern and contrast-filled Russia. Like her main character, Yarmysh is no stranger to the inside of a Russian prison cell, having herself been arrested at several demonstrations. She has been open about the book being based on her own experiences.At the House of Literature, Yarmysh met Norwegian politician Jette F. Christensen for a conversation about Yarmysh’s novel. Christensen is a political scientist and former parliamentary representative, with more than ten years of experience from the Storting's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Today she is Vice President of the Council of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
“Ukrainians have never accepted censorship. They have always wanted to say and write what they think. That is why almost all Ukrainian writers and poets in the 1920s and 1930s were shot by Soviet authorities… If Russia succeeds, we will have a new generation of executed writers and politicians, philosophers and philologists."
How should one fight for freedom of speech and facts in a war of propaganda? What can literature and art contribute in dark times? And when does the situation require the author to resort to other tools and weapons than literature?
Andrey Kurkov is one of Ukraine's most prominent writers, with nearly 30 publications for adults and children under his belt, including the novels Death and the Penguin and Friends of the Dead. He has been translated into more than 30 languages.Kurkov is the leader of PEN Ukraine, and has been strongly committed to the Russian invasion and to Ukraine's independence and freedom of expression. In this lecture, Kurkov addresses the situation for Ukrainian writers and journalists in Ukraine and provides an insight into Ukrainian history.
All ticket proceeds from this talk went to PEN Ukraine.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Does a house equal a home? This is one question Deborah Levy explores in her recent book Real Estate, the third and final instalment in her series of "living autobiographies", autobiographies written in the storms of life, and not in quiet contemplation towards the end of it. The need for a place of one's own - whether it be a physical place or a place in one's writing – is a recurring theme in all three volumes. Things I don't want to know (translated into Norwegian by Anne Cathrine Wollebæk) depicts growing up in Johannesburg and London, and charts Levy's path into writing. In 2018 came The Cost of Living, where Levy describes the attempt to find a new identity - and a new place to write - after a divorce. In the three books, Levy explores the connections between the personal and the political, the role of women and motherhood, and enters into a dialogue with artists such as George Orwell, Marguerite Duras, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf. Critic and former Vinduet editor Maria Horvei speaks with Levy in this recording from September 22nd, 2021.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
The new HBO mini series The Plot Against America is based on the Philip Roth novel (2004) by the same name. The novel tells the counterfactual story of Charles Lindberg’s presidency, based on the real man and what might happen if he, with his fascist sympathies, was elected president of the United States around 1940.The US has become increasingly racist and polarized during Donald Trump’s presidency. What is the current situation, and how does it compare to the works of Philip Roth? In this podcast, the American writer and literary critic John Freeman describes the atmosphere of the USA of today, starting from The Plot Against America and the other works by Philip Roth, as well as the American society. What does Roth’s story tell us about the USA of today and the crisis now facing the country?The actual Charles Lindbergh made a name for himself first and foremost by being the first to fly across the Atlantic ocean alone. He did, however, have a darker, political side, with which the actual F. D. Roosevelt confronted him: How deep did Lindbergh’s nazi sympathies lie? How close was the US to actually turning into a fascist state? In the novel, Lindbergh wins the presidency from Roosevelt in 1940s America, allowing for the emergence of a fascist, anti-Semite US, which affects the Jewish Roth family badly. The story is built on Philip Roth’s own experiences growing up in Newark, New Jersey.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Njabulo Ndebele grew up during the apartheid, and is one of South Africa's leading writers and intellectuals. He is the former vice principal at the University of Cape Town, and the author of the groundbreaking book The Cry of Winnie Mandela, in which he blends essay and novel, fact and fiction in an exploration of women’s position in the freedom struggle.
Koleka Putuma was born in 1993, and belongs to the generation in South Africa known as «Born Free». She is behind one of the most critically acclaimed poetry collections in years, Collective Amnesia, in which the anger of broken promises is acutely felt. Hear Koleka Putuma and Njabulo Ndebele in conversation with journalist Elise Dybvig. The conversation took place on the 11th of february 2020.
LitHouse is the English language podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo (Litteraturhuset), presenting adapted versions of conversations and lectures from our program.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Through titles such as Cooked, The Omnivore’s dilemma and In defense of Food, Michael Pollan, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’ and of the Practice of Non-Fiction at Harvard University, has distinguished himself as one of the world’s foremost feature writers and authors of non-fiction. His latest book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence is now out in its Norwegian translation, Psykedelisk renessanse. Pollan met Andreas Liebe Delsett in a conversation about food and eating habits that took place at the House of Literature on 11. December 2019. Delsett is the Artistic director at the House of Literature, as well as the author of Kjøkkenveien. En bok om mat og arbeid.
LitHouse is the English language podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo (Litteraturhuset), presenting adapted versions of conversations and lectures from our program.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Mexican poet Gloria Gervitz has been writing the same poem for over forty years. The epic poem Migrations (Migraciones) is one of the greatest poetic projects of our time – a poem in constant movement through family, religion, death and sexuality, but also through perpetual newly published versions. It is based on the history of Gervitz’s own Jewish family that fled persecution in Eastern Europe in the early 1900s. In this episode you can hear the legendary poet in conversation with the Swedish poet Athena Farrokhzad. Gervitz and Farrokhzad met in a conversation at the House of Literature that took place at the 5th of february 2020.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Is the assertion that freedom of expression is under pressure just a myth used to cover up more important political incompatibilities? In this event with the british-Sudanese author and Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, held at the House of Literature 22.january 2020, Malik opened Litteraturhuset’s Commission on the Freedom of Expression. In her lecture, she talked about freedom of expression. How has the climate for free speech changed over the last twenty years? What kinds of challenges does it create, and what measures are necessary to protect this cornerstone of Norwegian democracy? After the lecture, she talked with Nazneen Khan-Østrem, author of London: Among Gangsters, Rabbis, Oligarchs, Rebels and Other Legitimate Children of the British Empire and member of Stortinget’s Commission on the Freedom of Expression in 1999. Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Norway, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In Norway, Rachel Kushner is best known for her 2014 novel The Flamethrowers, set in New York’s art world. In Kushner’s new, critically acclaimed and Booker nominated novel The Mars Room, we are introduced to a very different yet also very American milieu. Here we meet Romy Hall, who is in prison for killing a man who followed and tormented her. Through Hall’s life inside the prison walls, Kushner is able to describe “her country’s fall from grace. This is not the land of the free; no one has choices and everyone is guilty,” as the Guardian pointed out in their review. In this episode Rachel Kushner talks about her authorship with Norwegian author and psychiatrist Finn Skårderud. The conversation took place on October 2nd 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
What if your view of the world is based on the experiences of black women, or those of working class, queer or transgendered women, and by that breaks with the way that the white middle class says a feminist is “supposed to be”?
Gay’s collection of essays, Bad Feminist, flew right into The New York Times’ best seller list when it was published in 2014. Her sharp, vulnerable and funny voice has been applauded across genres. She is a visiting Professor at Yale University, she writes fiction, and as a columnist for The New York Times, she has been one of the most distinct voices in the American “Me too”-debate. In her memoir Hunger, she explores the underlying causes of her own overweight: a trauma after being gang raped at twelve.
Gay met author Eline Lund Fjæren, for a conversation about power, feminism and privileges. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on August 21, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
What happens when blackness and whiteness are turned inside out? The Metamorphosis by Kafka is an obvious literary model when the Nigerian writer Igoni Barrett lets the main character of his last novel, Furo Wariboko, wake up on the day of his job interview to discover that his skin color has changed: He has turned white. His ass, however, remains black, and for this reason, the novel bears the title Blackass. There is sharp satire and humor in this nuanced portrait of Lagos, its citizens and the identity of skin color. Barrett met cultural editor of Morgenbladet, Ane Farsethås, for a conversation about black and white bodies, identity and privileges. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on August 20, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
The American writer Chris Kraus has previously visited The House of Literature to talk about I Love Dick, a semi-autobiographic novel first published in 1997, which still attracts new readers after more than twenty years.
In the House of Literature’s series “literary guiding stars”, authors are asked to talk about a writer they greatly admire. In this lecture Kraus tells about another American writer, Mary McCarthy. McCarthy is best known for her novel The Group, first published in 1959. The novel’s groundbreaking treatment of gender and sexual liberation received a great deal of attention upon publication. How does Kraus read McCarthy today, and in what ways is she still considered innovative? The lecture was held on June 7th 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In Siri Hustvedt’s new novel Memories of the Future, the grown up and well established writer S.H. enters into dialogue with twenty-year-old S.H., with her reflections, her writing and her experiences. What do we forget, and how can we use our memories? The writer Linn Ullmann is among those who have long followed Hustvedt’s writing, and in her last novel, Unquiet, she also examines the past and how we remember. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on June 12, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Several women who have survived brutal imprisonment and sexual violence in Syria are part of lawsuit initiatives against the current government. How may these initiatives contribute to hold the government responsible for their crimes, and to better the situation for Syrian women? Ibrahim Olabi is director of the Syrian Legal Development Program, and works with human rights issues connected to the Syrian conflict, such as sexualized violence against women. Olabi delivered the 2019 Saladin Lecture at the House of Literature, April 5, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
How can we understand the movement Gilets Jaunes – the Yellow vests? What does this police violence against blacks say about the official French view of black people?
Édouard Louis’s latest novel, Qui a tué mon père, or Who Killed My Father, has recently been published in Norwegian and English translations. Here, Louis writes about his father’s broken body. He recognizes the same broken, French working class body in the Yellow vests movement that have dominated international news since last fall.
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie is a French academic and intellectual, whose 2018 publication Judge and punish came after he for several years had followed a number of trials.
Louis and de Lagasnerie met artistic director at the House of Literature, Andreas Liebe Delsett, for a conversation about bodies, violence and power. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on May 27, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Sara Ahmed is a renowned scholar within fields such as feminist theory, queer theory and critical race theory. In her most recent project, Ahmed has interviewed staff and students about their experiences of making complaints about unequal working conditions or abuses of power such as harassment and bullying. The project has returned her to core questions about the role of emotions not only in how we consent to, but also how we challenge, authority. At the House of Literature, Ahmed gave a lecture on her project, and met sociologist and writer Hannah Helseth in conversation. The event took place on May 22, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
There is a longstanding literary tradition of portraying the city of Istanbul in writing, both by Turkish and other writers. Where does Turkish writer Burhan Sönmez place himself within this tradition? In his novel Istanbul, Istanbul, four political prisoners are held captive below the city. Afraid to expose each other under torture, they refrain from telling each other personal details. Instead, they tell each other number of anecdotes, riddles and stories from world literature and from the great city above their heads. The book is both an innovative prison novel and a portrait of a world city. The conversation between Sönmez and critic Janneken Øverland took place at the House of Literature April 4, 2019, during the International Saladin Days.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
The American writer Kristen Roupenian caused a sensation when her debut short story «Cat Person» was published in The New Yorker in 2017. With #Metoo at its peak, the story’s treatment of bad sex made it The New Yorker’s most-read online fiction text of all time. Roupenian’s debut collection contains horror elements and a fine-meshed humor emerging when humans and power relations are exposed in a light that is far from flattering. Hear Roupenian in conversation with her Norwegian colleague Eline Lund Fjæren. The conversation took place at the House of Literature April 3, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In French Moroccan Leïla Slimani’s books, the psychological development of the characters is what captures the reader. Lullaby explores the interactions of a small upper middle-class family. What power struggles take place within the walls of this Parisian apartment? What secrets are buried in the nanny’s past? And how do the children end up dead?
Leïla Slimani’s conversation with editor of Vinduet, Maria Horvei, took place on March 27, 2019.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This year marks 101 years since the birth of one of the world’s most influential artists: Ingmar Bergman. The anniversary last year brought renewed focus to his films, but what about his writing?
During his life, Bergman wrote more than 150 plays, film manuscripts, essays, articles and works of fiction. The Best Intentions (1991), Sunday’s Children (1992) and Private Confessions (1996) are often referred to as his “novel trilogy”, being closer in form to novels than texts written for theater or film. But are they novels?
The texts move between memoir, fiction and chamber play, while Bergman explores his own childhood through reminiscence of the past and the dramatic of the everyday.
The novel trilogy has been republished in both English and Norwegian. The American professor, critic, memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn has written the introductory essay to the Norwegian edition, in which he reads the trilogy in light of earlier encounters with Bergman’s works. But what does writer and daughter Linn Ullmann think of Bergman’s novel trilogy? The two meet cultural editor of Morgenbladet and writer Ane Farsethås for a conversation about the author Ingmar Bergman. The conversation took place on February 7th 2019.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
How are the Syrian refugees working today to understand and to process what happened before and during the war? What are their thoughts on the current situation? In her book We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled, Wendy Pearlman has gathered testimonies from some of the many hundred exiled Syrians she has interviewed, after they were forced to flee during the first years of the war. Wendy Pearlman is the arabist and Palestine scholar who could not help but be moved by the lives and stories of the many hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled to neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, and later also Denmark, Sweden and the US. In this podcast, you can hear her in conversation with artistic director at the House of Literature, Andreas Liebe Delsett.The conversation took place on October 10th 2018.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In German Jenny Erpenbeck’s most recent novel, The End of Days, her main character dies a total of five times; first as a baby, then as a young girl in a Europe between two world wars, then as a revolutionary fallen from grace in one of Stalin’s Siberian camps, then as a celebrated East-German writer and lastly as a 91 year old in a nursing home in a reunited Berlin. Erpenbeck is considered one of Germany’s leading contemporary writers. In an original, sharp and truly characteristic voice, Erpenbeck puts Europe’s recent history into writing. The Jewish pogroms prior to world war two, the choices and fates of individuals in the face of our century’s revolutionary powers, and how the aftermath of these choices plays out in contemporary Germany. Erpenbeck was first translated into Norwegian in 2017 with the novel Go, Went, Gone, which was recently longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize. The novel tells the story of a retired Classics professor who takes an interest in a group of hunger striking African migrants and their destiny, another piece of central history in a finely tuned literary form. Hear Erpenbeck in conversation with literary critic Kaja Schjerven Mollerin. The conversation took place on May 30th 2018.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon is a central voice in the new wave of literature from Central America and the Caribbean. The episodic and absurd novel The Polish Boxer moves between the university campus in Guatemala City to the Balkan of gypsys via the Nazis’ concentration camps. The traveler is a university teacher searching for a pianist who might be a gypsy. But he is also searching for his own family history: At the center of the story is his grandfather, with a number tattooed on his forearm. Not his own phone number, which he always struggled to remember, as the university teacher was told as a child, but his prison number from a concentration camp. Once, his grandfather’s life was saved by a Polish boxer. Hear Eduardo Halfon in conversation with writer and editor Mattis Øybø. The conversation took place on september 14th 2018.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Valeria Luiselli, translated into more than twenty languages, is a central name in Mexican contemporary literature. Her debut novel, Faces in the crowd, has made critics compare Luiselli to writers such as Ali Smith and Zadie Smith. It has now been published in Norwegian, translated by Ingrid Mefald Hafredal. In Faces in the crowd, several temporal levels and several story strands are weaved together. In Mexico City, a writer and mother of two is writing about the time she lived in New York. The time she was obsessed with the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen, who lived and worked in 1920s New York, on the fringes of the Modernist movement the Harlem Renaissance. What connections are there between the obscure poet and the writer’s own lives? Listen to Valeria Luiselli in conversation with Maria Horvei, editor of the literary magazine Vinduet. The event took place August 28, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In her essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, the Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli explores the fates of Latin American child migrants in and on their way to the US. Luiselli herself lives in the US, and in an acute refugee situation, she volunteered as an interpreter and gained first hand knowledge about the violence and discrimination that the refugees experience. Photographer, writer and performance artist Teju Cole was born in Nigeria, but has lived in New York and the US for much of his life. On several occasions, he has pointed out parallels in the waves of Latin American immigrants entering the US, and the fates of the refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. In her novels, British-Somali writer Nadifa Mohamed has investigated Somali experiences of marginalization and violent structures within the British Empire. Mohamed will moderate this evening’s conversation, that will focus on Trump’s US, but also on the open wounds of history: the legacy of slavery and colonization, as well as on literary affinities with writers like James Baldwin and Claude McKay. The conversation took place August 29, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
A. S. Byatt was named one of Britain’s fifty greatest writers by The Times in 2008. Her literary breakthrough, Possession: A Romance, was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize. Byatt visited the House of Literature in connection with the 2011 Norwegian publication of her novel The Children's Book, which is set in Southern England in the late 19th century. In conversation with Duke University professor Toril Moi, Byatt discusses her writing strategies, her extensive research processes and growing interest for history. The conversation took place June 8. 2011.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Daniel Mendelsohn is a Classics professor, and teaches his students the classic epic The Odyssey. One Spring, his 81 year old father decides to take his class. But what kind of a hero was Oddyseus, really? the father asks critically - a liar who cheated on his wife! This is the starting point for Daniel Mendelsohn’s memoir An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic. In this podcast, Mendelsohn talks with literary critic in Morgenbladet, Bernhard Ellefsen, about following in the footsteps of the classics. The conversation took place on October 25. 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Ariel Levy is a successful journalist in The New Yorker, where she often writes about women who break with the traditional expectations in how you express and live gender and sexuality. She has a nice little house and is married to the woman in her life. When she, at 37, also becomes pregnant, her life is perfect. Or not.
The Rules Do Not Apply (translated into Norwegian by Rune R. Moen) is Levy’s memoir, in which the pivot point is those few weeks when the foundation of her life crumbles and she is brought down by the very biological rules she thought herself above. At the house of Literature she met Morgenbladet’s Bernhard Ellefsen for a conversation about biology and lived life. The event took place April 11, 2018.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
The Sellout is about an America so steeped in its racist history that race becomes unavoidable. But nobody wants to talk about it, and there is no end of human oblivion, foolishness and evil. The Guardian has dubbed Beatty the funniest writer in America. However, the novel is also characterized by an immensely precise language and deadly seriousness. At the House of Literature, Beatty met writer, poet and editor Dan Andersen for a conversation. The event took place April 18, 2018, and opened with a video introduction from comedian Thomas Seltzer, one of Beatty’s greatest Norwegian fans.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Autumn (translated into Norwegian by Merete Alfsen) is the first in Scottish Ali Smith’s season quartet. Winter has already come out in English. In both books, hope, warmth, sensuality and humanity is articulated as a contrast to political lies and cowardice. Art is portrayed as a path to a truer, more beautiful and sharper understanding of the world.
Exploring human relations and art as a way to find truth is central also to Linn Ullman’s writing. Smith og Ullmann met in a conversation at the House of Literature that took place at the 4th of april 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a lecture by Oxford historian and author of The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan, about the history of the Crusades, as seen from Asia. The lecture was delivered as part of the 2018 International Saladin Days, on March 6th, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Colson Whiteheads novel The Underground Railroad was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It soon became a #1 New York Times Bestseller, it got picked by Oprah Winfrey for her book club, and the US President Obama chose it for his summer reading list. The book mixes the historical novel with allegory and sci-fi, as Whitehead tells the story of Cora, a 15-year-old slave who escapes from a plantation in Georgia. This haunting and inventive narrative gives an alternative history of the American slavery. This conversation between Whitehead and editor of the Norwegian Book magazine of Klassekampen, Karin Haugen, took place on August 24th, 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between Martin Puchner and Helge Jordheim about literature’s role in shaping the world. What came first – the world as we know it, or the stories about the world? Puchner is one of the world’s foremost literary critics and scholars, and professor at the University of Harvard. Jordheim is professor of cultural history at the University of Oslo. The conversation took place February 14, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the American writer Jennifer Egan and the Norwegian writer and psychologist Finn Skårderud, about Egan’s novel Manhattan Beach. The conversation took place on February 9th, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the English writer Rachel Cusk and the Norwegian author Linn Ullmann, talking about the first books of Cusk’s fiction trilogy Outline and Transit. The conversation took place on January 24th, 2018.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Édouard Louis, Athena Farrokhzad and Kristina Leganger Iversen has all written literature challenging and expanding the way we think about identity, language and the body. Together with composer and pop artist Sandra Kolstad, they have created the performance The political body. Commissioned for the House of Literature’s ten year anniversary, it was first performed at the House of Literature October 6, 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Twenty years after her success novel The God of Small Things, India’s Arundhati Roy is back with a new novel: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. But in between the two, Roy has been busy: through a number of essay books, she has dealt with issues such as pollution, human rights abuses, industrialization and social inequality, she has lived with the maoist guerilla in the jungle and visited the militarized zone in Kashmir. In this lecture, she outlines her literary and political work through twenty years. The lecture was given as part of the House of Literature’s ten year anniversary, on September 14, 2017, as one out of three anniversary lectures about the Future of Literature.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Nigerian Chimamanda Adichie has long made her mark as a distinct political voice. Both in her novels and her small non-fiction books We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Adichie addresses issues of power, violence, independence and the role of literature in understanding and expanding one’s view of the world. Hear her in conversation with cultural editor of Morgenbladet, Ane Farsethås. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on October 25, 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Turkish writer Aslı Erdoğan published several novels, narratives and short stories before she became a more prominent political newspaper writer. In 2016 she was arrested and imprisoned for her attachment to the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem (Free Agenda). She recently got her passport back and was finally able to travel to Oslo to take part in a stage conversation. At The House of Literature, she meets the Swedish-Kurdish writer Mustafa Can in a conversation about her new essay collection Now is not your stillness, composed of texts that have been pressed in Özgür Gündem over the last few years. The essays provide personal and poetical considerations and portrayals of being in the midst of bulletins and chaos during the coup attempt, about writing, dreams, violence and political reality in today's Turkey. What does Erdoğan think about her roles as an author and political writer? Is there still room for poetry when there are so many rights to fight for? The conversation took place at The House of Literature in Oslo, on November 5th 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the American writer Paul Auster and the Norwegian critic and former editor, Janneken Øverland. The conversation took place on August 22nd, 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the Indian writer Arundhati Roy and director of the National Library og Norway Aslak Sira Myhre. They met on stage shortly after Arundhati Roys new novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness came out in Norwegian translation. The conversation took place on September 19th 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the Turkish writer and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, and professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Helge Jordheim. Pamuk visited Oslo spring 2017, when his most recent book The Red-Haired Woman was out in Norwegian translation by Ingeborg Fossestøl. The conversation took place on May 24th, 2017.
For more than thirty years, writer and Nobel Prize Laureate Orhan Pamuk has written world literature with Turkey as his vantage point. His strong interest in myths and stories, society and history runs like a common thread throughout his body of work, which connects Eastern and Western cultural heritage and modernity. He is Turkey’s most-read writer, but he is also contested, and he fearlessly takes on complex questions about politics and society, conflicted identities or the life of the artist. Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2006.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the American writer Chris Kraus and Culture Editor of Morgenbladet, Ane Farsethås. The conversation took place on August 20th, 2017.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House og Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer and the Norwegian writer and journalist Bjørn Gabrielsen, that took place on August 16th, 2017. Everything solid and fixed falls apart in Jonathan Safran Foer’s third novel Here I Am. The Jewish American couple Jacob and Julia find that both their relationship and the rituals that they have built their family life around, gradually lose their meaning. When the unimaginable happens, and Israel suffers both an earthquake and then a devastating defeat in war, Jacob finds himself in a deep identity crisis, as a husband, a father and a Jew.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear a conversation between the American writers Siri Hustvedt and Chris Kraus, led by Anne-Hilde Neset, director of Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.
Why are men still connected to intellect and society, and women to emotions and the body? This is one of the key questions in this conversation, as Hustvedt, Kraus and Neset discuss gender and perception of literature and art, talking about female antiheroes, rage and women’s place and recognition in the art world. In Siri Hustvedt's last essay collection, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, she examines how narrow ideas of gender and perception affect how we experience art and literature. Art and identity is also a topic in her latest novel, The Blazing World. Chris Kraus, famous writer of the kult novel I love Dick, is the author of a number of genre bending essays and novels dealing with women's experiences in the art world. The conversation took place on August 21st, 2017.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, you can hear the American writer Emma Cline talking with the Norwegian writer and editor Mattis Øybø. The conversation took place on April 26th, 2017.
Emma Clines acclaimed debut novel The Girls struck a nerve in 2016 when it was published in the US. It has been praised by Richard Ford, Jennifer Egan and Lena Dunham – and embraced by readers and critics world wide. The novel takes us back to California 1969, to a young girl’s quite ordinary and dull life in a small place, and describes in a beautiful language how her life suddenly develops into something totally different, after she meets the girls. Inspired by the Charles Manson murders, Clines novel asks what forces can make regular teen girls into brutal murderers. Cline circles in on this question from the perspective of the girls themselves. Writer and editor Mattis Øybø has also written about a charismatic sect, and the road into the extreme in his highly praised novel Ingen er alene/Nobody is alone.
Lithouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, Nazmi Al-Jubeh, historian and archeologist at Birzeit Univeristy, and Hind Khoury, former Minister for Jerusalem Affairs for the Palestinian Authorities, talk about the current situation in Jerusalem, following the 2014 Gaza war, reflecting openly on the situation for Palestinians in Jerusalem under occupation, and the shortcomings of the Palestinian Authorities. Leading the conversation is senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Marte Heian-Engdal. The Palestinian poet Jehan Bseiso also reads her poem Hashtag Gaza. The conversation took place at the House of Literature March 6th, 2017, as part of the 2017 Saladin Days, focusing on Jerusalem.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, writer and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore talks about his book The Romanovs: 1613-1918, which tells the often brutal, bloody and erotic story of the Tsar dynasty which ruled Russia for 300 years. Leading the conversation is Erika Fatland, herself an acclaimed author of several non-fiction books from Russian-controlled areas, among these Englebyen, Historier fra Beslan (The City of Angels. Stories from Beslan) and Sovjetistan. The conversation took place at the House of Literature on March 3rd 2017. LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, the American writer Jenny Offill talks with the Norwegian literary critic Bernhard Ellefsen, in a conversation that took place on August 17th 2016. Introduction by the Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, the Libyan writer Hisham Matar talks with Helge Jordheim, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. The conversation took place on august 24th 2016. Introduction by Sigurd Falkenberg Mikkelsen, Middle East correspondent for The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode, the Argentinian writer César Aira talks with his Norwegian translator Kristina Solum, in a conversation that took place on September 14th 2016. Introduction by Gisle Selnes, professor of Literature at the University of Bergen.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode you can hear Selahattin Demirtaş giving that Saladin Lecture 2016. The lecture was given on April 13th, as part of the International Saladin Days, and was held in Turkish. It was followed by a few questions that were put to mr. Demirtaş in English, and answered in Turkish.
Selahattin Demirtaş is the chairman of Turkey's pro Kurdish coalition party HDP, and considered by many to be the key to the Kurds' future in Turkey.
LitHouse is a podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo, Litteraturhuset. Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode the French writer Édouard Louis talks about Toni Morrison, in a lecture that was given at the House of Literature in Oslo on september 23rd 2016.
LitHouse is the English language podcast from the House of Literature in Oslo (Litteraturhuset). Music by Apothek.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.