Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro translated by Frances Riddle, out with Charco Press, discussed at the BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly, London, in person with the author and her publisher. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

Fathers and Fugitives follows Daniel, a gay journalist in London, who becomes involved with a Serbian couple after meeting them at the Tate Modern. His errant, aimless lifestyle is transformed after he has to return home to South Africa and care for his dying father.

Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Lucy North, published by Pushkin Press discussed at the BookBlast® Translation Book Club, Hatchards, Piccadilly, London. In April 2025, Hiromi Kawakami’s novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird, translated by Asa Yoneda, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.

Book Club discussion at Hatchards Piccadilly about A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare based oround Stalin’s alleged three-minute telephone call to Boris Pasternak

Book Club discussion at Hatchards Piccadilly about Clara Reads Proust by Stephane Carlier revealing how Proust can change your life

Hear our special guest at the October BookBlast Translation Book Club, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, co-editor and translator of Warsaw Tales (OUP 2024).

Pour célébrer la parution du livre ’Une femme, deux hommes Lesley Blanch, Théodore Kommissarzhevsky et Romain Gary’ à la Maison de Balzac, Paris, le Mercredi 5 Juin 2024, Simon Bentolila de Lire Magazine a discuté avec Georgia de Chamberet, de la vie et des amours de Lesley Blanch (1904-2007).

Georgia de Chamberet at BookBlast® is delighted to interview Sian Williams, the visionary founder of the Children’s Bookshow. Discover how this much loved and hugely popular national tour of writers and illustrators of children’s literature first began and who will be on tour this autumn. Michael Rosen: “The Children’s Bookshow takes children’s authors to meet tens of thousands of children, introducing children to how and why writers write, illustrators illustrate. They give children insights into how they too can transform thoughts and feelings into words and pictures. This is not simply a matter of it being enjoyable, it’s a necessary part of what we understand by the word ‘education’.” Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | A BookBlast® Production Episode number 47

Abdourahman Waberi discusses his most autobiographical work to date. Essential listening for readers of Francophone literature!

An autobiographical first novel, The Last One tells the story of Fatima and her family. The confusing polarities between different worlds and cultures that are portrayed sparked an intense Media debate in France. Although based on true events and experiences, Fatima Daas changed certain aspects in order to be free to write what she wanted, and convey her feelings about specific events.   Tune in to hear a lively conversation with Fatima Daas and podcast host Georgia de Chamberet, about literary inspiration, handling her surprise overnight success, and the pressures directed at women from religion and from society, and more besides The Last One is published in English, by HopeRoad Publishing. The interview is in both French and English.   Produced by BookBlast  

Faïza Guène writes about normal people living in urban tower block estates surrounding cities like Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. Her first novel, Kiffe kiffe demain, published in England under the title Just Like Tomorrow, sold over 400,000 copies when it came out and has been translated into 26 different languages. She was just nineteen. Tune in to hear her lively conversation with translator of sixteen years, Sarah Ardizzone, and host Georgia de Chamberet, about inner city school life, the impact of Black Lives Matter, the 2024 Olympic Games, translating argot and Arabic-influenced backslang, and all about her latest novel out in English, Men Don’t Cry (Cassava Republic), in which quirky family antics and familial pettiness make for much hilarity: everyone can relate to it. Produced by Simon James  

Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, became an instant, international literary sensation when it was published in France in January 2020. Her beautifully written, intimate and powerful description of her relationship in the mid-1980s with the French author Gabriel Matzneff, when she was fourteen and he fifty, is a beautifully written universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, resilience and healing. Translator, Natasha Lehrer, and Georgia de Chamberet, discuss libertarian attitudes and French culture; the trouble with Feminism in France; literary name-and-shame public revelations leading to the downfall of powerful sexual abusers; and more. Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by BookBlast® © the artists care of bookblast ltd

Beka Adamashvili's Bestseller pokes fun at literary pretentiousness, humbug and bookish aspirations with wit and verve. Hear him, his translator and Georgia de Chamberet discuss satire and Georgian culture.

The Fig Tree is a remarkable portrait of a country’s fragmentation and a family’s fracture, making forLucy Popescu's illuminating discussion with author Goran Vojnović and translator Olivia Hellewell

In THE WHITE DRESS, Nathalie Léger tells the story of Pippa Bacca, a thirty-three-year-old Italian feminist performance artist who decided to hitchhike from Milan to Jerusalem wearing a white wedding dress to symbolise “marriage between different peoples and nations.” Through her intense examination of Bacca’s final work and of the often polarised public reaction to the role of women in art, Léger also compellingly addresses her own conflicted relationship with her elderly mother. Does Bacca’s work actually need to be translated in a narrative form. Like any visual artist, it’s there in the performative act. Which makes one ask is all communication translation or indeed translatable? In your view, what makes a good translator and how can translation change perceptions of our world? Discover the answers to these questions and more, as Lucy Popescu interviews award-winning translator Natasha Lehrer who has translated two of Léger’s books. Presented by Lucy Popescu | Produced by Rupert Such 

Georgia de Chamberet interviews Philip Gwyn Jones who has extensive experience at the heart of literary publishing having started his career at the late, lamented Flamingo imprint at HarperCollins, then founding Portobello Books and merging it with Granta Books, moving on to Scribe, and since June this year, heading up the Picador imprint at Macmillan. “You were the first British editor to offer a book contract to Jenny Erpenbeck, Ove Knausgaard, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Kathryn Schulz and Zadie Smith, amongst others. Tell us about some of your recent discoveries published by Scribe and what makes each one so special.” “Tommy Wieringa - author of The Blessed Rita which you have published in Spring this year - is one of europe’s biggest selling authors. What is his magic ingredient?” “As voices from the margins have become louder, influencing the political mainstream, how has fiction written from an “outsider” perspective evolved and increasingly become an identifiable genre in publishing since you began your career publishing translations?” Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such

Lucy Popescu interviews Tommy Wieringa and his translator from Dutch, Sam Garrett. Wieringa's novel The Death of Murat Idrissi was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019. In 2018 he won the Bookspot Literatuurprijs for his novel De heilige Rita, The Blessed Rita, published this year by Scribe UK. It is a compelling portrait of the forgotten and Wieringa makes a strong case for empathy with those living on the margins of society. “Did you grow up in a rural or urban community?” “What draws you to write about men on the margins?”  “Tommy, regarding empathy for your characters and their situations, by writing about flawed characters you remind us of our shared humanity. Was that your intention?” Hear the answers to these questions and more in this insightful exclusive interview. Presented by Lucy Popescu | Produced by Rupert Such

Interview avec le romancier, essayiste, critique et poète marocain le plus vendu au niveau international, Tahar Ben Jelloun, au sujet de son livre, Le Terrorisme explique à nos enfants. Cette semaine les complices présumés sont devant le tribunal de Paris pour les attentats de janvier 2015. Pouvez-vous décrire brièvement à nos auditeurs anglophones les racines du terrorisme en France et quelles sont les objectifs présumés des terroristes? Comment pensez vous que l’État pourrait contrôler ses forces de police et leurs «bavures»? Est il possible que les consequences toxiques du colonialisme puissent être mieux reconnues pour réévaluer le récit publique sur l'islam et la politique sociale républicaine? Qu'est-ce qui vous a poussé à écrire ce livre? Écoutez les réponses à ces questions et plus encore dans cette interview qui est très nécessaire. Presenté par Georgia de Chamberet | Produit par Rupert Such | version originale

The Moroccan poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist, Tahar Ben Jelloun, is one of France's most celebrated writers. He has written extensively about Moroccan culture, the immigrant experience, human rights, and sexual identity. With the trial opening this week in Paris over the January 2015 attacks on the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, and a kosher supermarket that killed seventeen people, Terrorism: Conversations with My Daughter (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) is a timely and essential read. Can you briefly describe for our listeners the roots of terrorism in France, and what are its intentions? How could the powers that be in France address the ongoing issue of police violence and toxic legacy of colonialism in an attempt to reassess its narrative about Islam, and its social policies?  Hear the answers to these questions and more in this insightful interview for curious minds.   Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such | Voice-over by Issa Naseri

Christopher MacLehose brought WG Sebald, José Saramago, Haruki Murakami, Claudio Magris, Javier Marías, Jin Yong and many others to English-language readers. He is credited as having launched the bestselling genre of crime fiction in translation now known as “Nordic Noir”. In 1984 you published Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg, followed by Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander’s series in the 1990s a.k.a. “the father of Nordic noir”, Jo Nesbo in the 2000s, and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Why do Scandinavians write such great crime fiction?   As a consistently passionate advocate of fine literature in translation throughout your career, what in your view makes a good translation, and what makes it last? Tune in to find out more . . . Presented by Georgia de Chamberet | Produced by Rupert Such