The Secret River with Kate Grenville

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Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole

78 episodes

4 days ago

Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.

The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC.
Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.

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The Secret River with Kate Grenville

Secret Life of Books

54 minutes 8 seconds

3 weeks ago

The Secret River with Kate Grenville

This special episode on a great modern classic was recorded live at the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2025. Very few novels can genuinely claim to have changed a nation’s consciousness. The Secret River, written by Kate Grenville and published in 2005, is one of those books. It put a spotlight on a side of white settler experience that Australians had been brought up to ignore - the violence, murders and genocide. By questioning her ancestors, Kate Grenville encouraged thousands of Australians with British ancestry to do likewise. Many of us have done so as a consequence of this book, wondering if those heroic pioneers we heard about at a grandparent’s knee were really quite as heroic as all that.

Kate Grenville, The Secret River, The Leiutenant, Sarah Thornhill.

Kate Grenville, Searching for the Secret River, Unsettled.

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