The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast Channel hosts two podcasts:
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For more information about Anthony Burgess visit the International Anthony Burgess Foundation online.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast Channel hosts two podcasts:
-----
For more information about Anthony Burgess visit the International Anthony Burgess Foundation online.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re exploring the heaven of Michael Frayn’s Sweet Dreams with Frayn expert Katrine Antonsen.
Sweet Dreams follows the afterlife of Howard Baker, a middle-class, educated professional. In the first chapter, he dies in a car accident and finds himself in a strange city which seems to be tailor made for him. As his afterlife progresses, he replaces leisure and enjoyment with a recreation of his earthly life, complete with his wife, his children and his friends. But the monotonous comfort of the celestial suburbs inspire him to go on a philosophical journey in the hope of meeting God.
Michael Frayn was born in 1933 in London, where he still lives. He is perhaps best known for his work for the stage, including the plays Noises Off and Copenhagen. He has written eleven novels, with Spies winning the Whitbread Prize for best novel in 2002. Frayn has also written memoir, journalism, philosophy, several screenplays, and translated the works of Anton Chekov and Leo Tolstoy.
Katrine Antonsen is currently a lecturer in English Literature at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy in Trondheim, Norway. She completed her PhD in the works of Micheal Frayn in 2018. She has written and lectured about Frayn in both Britain and Norway, and has introduced a Norwegian-language performance of Noises Off with a lecture at the Trøndelag Teater, Trondheim.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Michael Frayn:
A Very Private Life (1968)
Make and Break (1980)
Noises Off (1982)
A Landing on the Sun (1991)
Now You Know (1993)
Copenhagen (1998)
Spies (2002)
By others:
England, England by Julian Barnes (1998)
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LINKS
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Burgess Foundation newsletter at Substack
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to writer and critic Bob Batchelor about The Coup by John Updike, a novel Anthony Burgess called ‘a beautifully written disturbing lyric composition’.
The Coup focusses on Hakim Felix Ellellou, the former dictator of Kush, a fictional Islamic state in Africa. He looks back on his life and his time as ruler and documents the American involvement in the political life of his country. Through double-dealing and betrayal, the Americans are instrumental in inspiring a coup against Ellellou.
John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1932. He published his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, in 1959. He is perhaps best known for the four novels that deal with the adventured of Rabbit Angstrom, and for The Witches of Eastwick, which was adapted into a film in 1987. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his novel Rabbit at Rest. He died in 2009.
Bob Batchelor has written 16 books on subjects as wide as The Great Gatsby, Jim Morrison and the Doors, the Prohibition, and comic book writer Stan Lee. He has written extensively about John Updike, including the book John Updike: A Critical Biography. He has also presented the podcast series John Updike: American Writer, American Life. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Culture at Coastal Carolina University.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By John Updike:
Rabbit, Run (1960)
'Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu' in the New Yorker (1960)
Rabbit Redux (1971)
Marry Me (1976)
Picked-Up Pieces (1976)
Rabbit is Rich (1981)
The Witches of Eastwick (1984)
Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Terrorist (2006)
By others:
Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn (1975)
Maria La Davina by Jerome Charyn (2025)
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LINKS
Bob Batchelor online
John Updike: A Critical Biography by Bob Batchelor (affiliate link)
Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel by Bob Batchelor (affiliate link)
John Updike: American Writer, American Life podcast by Bob Batchelor
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Burgess Foundation weekly newsletter on Substack
The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Will Carr investigates the postmodern delights of The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, with writer and editor Charles Drazin.
Telling the story of the meeting between the gentleman Charles Smithson and the disgraced Sarah Woodruff, The French Lieutenant’s Woman defies the conventions of the Victorian novels to which it pays homage. Putatively a love story, the narrative leads to multiple conflicting endings. Of the novel, Anthony Burgess wrote, ‘A very modern mind is manipulating us as well as the characters.’
John Fowles was born in 1926 in Essex. After training to join the navy, he studied at New College, Oxford, where he became interested in writing. After university, he became a teacher, holding posts in Britain, France and Greece, the latter inspiring the setting of his novel The Magus. His first novel, The Collector, was published in 1963, and he went on to write six more novels, a book of essays, a collection of poetry and several more non-fiction works. He died in 2005.
Charles Drazin is the editor of two volumes of journals by John Fowles. He has written about a variety of subjects. His books on film include In Search of The Third Man and The Faber Book of French Cinema. He has written the histories The Man Who Outshone the Sun King, which tells the story of Louis XIV’s finance minister Nicolas Foucquet; and Mapping the Past, which follows a family of Irish Catholic surveyors who mapped vast swathes of the British Empire. His most recent book, Making Hollywood Happen (2022), tells the inside story a little-known company that in the past seventy years has overseen the production of hundreds of the most celebrated movies ever made. He is currently working on the Faber Book of British Cinema.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By John Fowles:
The Collector (1963)
A Maggot (1985)
Journals, Volumes One and Two (2003, 2006)
By others:
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
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LINKS
Making Hollywood Happen by Charles Drazin
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The Burgess Foundation Newsletter at Substack
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re learning about The Vendor of Sweets by R.K. Narayan with writer, editor and academic Claire Chambers.
The Vendor of Sweets tells the story of Jagan, a Hindu sweetmaker who strictly follows the principles of Mahatma Ghandi. When his layabout son, Mali, decides he wants to study creative writing in America, Jagan initially supports him, but when a newly westernised Mali returns to India with an American wife and a plan to manufacture novel-writing machines, Jagan’s patience wears thin.
R.K. Narayan was born in Madras (now Chennai), India in 1906. His first novel, Swami and Friends, was published in 1930 and introduced the world to Malgudi, the fictional Indian town in which many of Narayan’s subsequent novels, including The Vendor of Sweets, are set. In 1958, his novel The Guide, won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy. Narayan wrote 15 novels, 9 books of non-fiction, and 6 collections of short stories. He died in 2001.
Claire Chambers is Professor of Global Literature at the University of York and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She specialises in literature from South Asia, the Perso-Arab world, and their diasporas. She is the author of several books, including Britain Through Muslim Eyes (2015), Rivers of Ink: Selected Essays (2017), and Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels (2019). She edited Desi Delicacies: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia (2021), co-edited A Match Made in Heaven (2020), and co-authored Storying Relationships (2021). Her forthcoming book is Decolonizing Disease: Pandemics, Public Health, and Pathogenic Novels and will be published by Liverpool University Press in 2026.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By R.K. Narayan:
Malgudi Days (1943)
The Guide (1958)
By others:
Rayamana by Valmiki (c. 500 BCE)
Mahābhārata by Vyasa (c. 400 BCE)
Hind Swaraj by Mohandas Gandhi (1909)
Kanthapura by Raja Rao (1938)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
'Toba Tek Singh' in Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition by Saadat Hasan Manto (1955)
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (2023)
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (2023)
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LINKS
Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels by Claire Chambers (affiliate link)
Translation and Decolonisation, edited by Claire Chambers and Ipek Demir (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, novelist and academic Norman Ravvin joins us to talk about Cocksure by Mordecai Richler, a novel Anthony Burgess called ‘grimly funny’.
Cocksure tells the story of Mortimer Griffin, a publisher whose routine life collides with the world of the Star Maker, a grotesque Hollywood movie producer who buys Mortimer’s publishing house and sets his life on a downward spiral. Mortimer suffers a breakdown of his marriage, has to contend with a school teaching the children the work of Marquis de Sade, and begins to question his identity as a Canadian Anglican. Eventually Mortimer uncovers the Star Maker’s horrific secret to making blockbuster movies.
Mordecai Richer was born in 1931 in Montreal, Canada. After working for the Canadian Broadcasting Service in the 1950s, he moved to London where he wrote seven of his novels, including Cocksure. Returning to Montreal in 1972, he wrote three more novels, including Barney’s Version, which was adapted into a film in 2010. Richler died in 2001.
Norman Ravvin is a writer, critic, and teacher. His publications include the novels The Girl Who Stole Everything, Café des Westens and Lola by Night. In 2023 he published Who Gets In: An Immigration Story, which blends memoir, history and archival work to tell the story of his grandfather's efforts to bring his family after him from Poland in the early 1930s. A native of Calgary, he lives in Montreal, where he teaches at Concordia University in the Department of Religions and Cultures.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Mordecai Richler:
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959)
The Incomparable Atuk (1963)
St. Urbain's Horseman (1971)
Barney's Version (1997)
By others:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)
The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West (1939)
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)
Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)
Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano (1997)
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
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LINKS
Who Gets In: An Immigration Story by Norman Ravvin (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
International Anthony Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction.
In this episode, Graham Foster explores the mysterious castle of Gormenghast, the setting of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, with writer and editor Rob Maslen.
Titus Groan begins with the birth of an heir to Lord Groan, the ruler of the castle of Gormenghast. As baby Titus comes into the world, the castle is beset by scheming and violence, primarily at the hands of Steerpike, an exceptionally clever, but malevolent, teenager. As he manipulates the other residents of the castle, his plotting threatens the traditions and rules that govern life within its walls, bringing madness and death to the Groan family.
Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in China, where his father was a medical missionary. After returning to England in 1922, he studied at the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy of Art. After building a reputation as an artist and illustrator during the Second World War, he published the novels that make up the Gormenghast Trilogy between 1946 and 1959. He died in 1968.
Rob Maslen is Emeritus Professor at the University of Glasgow. In 2015 he founded Glasgow’s MLitt in Fantasy, the first graduate programme in the world specifically dedicated to the study of fantasy and the fantastic, and from 2020 to 2022 he served as Co-director, with Professor Dimitra Fimi, of the Glasgow Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. He has written three books: Elizabethan Fictions (1997), Shakespeare and Comedy (2005), and The Shakespeare Handbook (2008), and has edited Mervyn Peake’s Collected Poems (2008), as well as co-editing Mervyn Peake’s Complete Nonsense (2011). He has published many essays on early modern literature and twentieth-century fantasy and science fiction.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Mervyn Peake:
The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1949)
Gormenghast (1950)
Titus Alone (1959)
Mervyn Peake: The Man and his Art (2008)
By others:
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759-67)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
Peter Pan/Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie (1911)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
The Castle by Franz Kafka (1926)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
In Parenthesis by David Jones (1937)
The Aerodrome by Rex Warner (1941)
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (1952)
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-5)
The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991)
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (2000)
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng (2017)
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)
Babel by R.F. Kuang (2022)
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LINKS
The City of Lost Books, Rob Maslen's blog.
Mervyn Peake: Collected Poems, edited by Rob Maslen
Mervyn Peake: Complete Nonsense, edited by Rob Maslen and G. Peter Winnington
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Anthony Burgess's friend and colleague Ben Forkner, who met Burgess at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 and went on to have a lasting friendship with him over the subsequent years. Here, Ben Forkner looks back on this friendship and shares a tape of Burgess reading the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins which he recorded at his home in Angers.
Narrated by Andrew Biswell with readings from Ben Forkner's introduction to One Man's Chorus by Graham Foster.
Ben Forkner's interview was recorded in December 2024 over the telephone.
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LINKS
Read Ben Forkner's introduction to One Man's Chorus in full
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Burgess Foundation free Substack newsletter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, writer and academic Sarah Graham leads Graham Foster through the 1940s Manhattan of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield, a bereaved teenager who recalls a weekend spent in Manhattan after he is expelled from boarding school. As he tells his story of wandering the streets looking for some form of connection in seedy hotels, bars, and nightclubs, he gradually reveals his own state of mind and his desire to rebel against the society that he doesn’t understand.
J.D. Salinger was born in New York in 1919. After participating in some of the most consequential battles of World War II, he began writing short stories for the New Yorker, many of which centred around the Glass family. After publishing the short story collections Nine Stories (1953) and Franny and Zooey (1961), and the volume of two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), he retired from public life. He died in 2010.
Sarah Graham is Associate Professor in American Literature at the University of Leicester. Her most recent publications are A History of the Bildungsroman (CUP, 2019) and reviews of American fiction for the Times Literary Supplement. She published a reader’s guide to The Catcher in the Rye in 2007 (Continuum), edited a collection of essays on the novel for Routledge (2007), and has contributed to magazines, conferences and programmes discussing Salinger’s work, including ‘J. D. Salinger: Made in England’ for BBC Radio 4.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By J.D. Salinger:
Nine Stories (1953)
By others:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines (1943)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)
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LINKS
Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: A Reader's Guide by Sarah Graham
A History of the Bildungsroman, edited by Sarah Graham
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Burgess Foundation's Free Substack Newsletter
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re joined by novelist Adam Roberts, who introduces us to Life in the West by Brian Aldiss.
Life in the West tells the story of Thomas Squire, a filmmaker who is attending an academic conference to introduce his new documentary, Frankenstein in the Arts. At the conference he engages in conversations with the other attendees while dealing with the dissolution of his marriage, the trauma of his childhood and the violent years he spent in Yugoslavia as a member of British intelligence. Anthony Burgess calls the novel ‘a rich book, not afraid of thought.’
Brain Aldiss was born in 1925. After serving in Burma during World War II he worked as a bookseller in Oxford, which was the inspiration for his first novel The Brightfount Diaries, published in 1955. He went on to become one of the most respected British science fiction writers, writing 41 novels, 26 collections of short stories, 8 volumes of poetry, 5 volumes of autobiography and many more works of literary criticism, drama and edited anthologies. He died in 2017 at the age of 92.
Adam Roberts is a writer and an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London. His most recent novel, Lake of Darkness is available now. A History of Fantasy is forthcoming from Bloomsbury (2025).
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Brian Aldiss:
Hothouse (1962)
Greybeard (1964)
Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973)
Frankenstein Unbound (1973)
Helliconia Trilogy (1982-85)
Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986)
Forgotten Life (1988)
Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's: A Writing Life (1990)
Remembrance Day (1993)
Twinkling of an Eye, or My Life as an Englishman (1998)
Somewhere East of Life (1994)
'Supertoys Last All Summer Long' in The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s Part 2 (2015)
By others:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
Small World by David Lodge (1984)
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LINKS
Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts (affiliate link)
Fantasy: A Short History by Adam Roberts (forthcoming)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Burgess Foundation's newsletter at Substack
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Will Carr is joined by writer and academic Paul Fagan to discuss At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien.
At Swim-Two-Birds is narrated by a young undergraduate student who invents wild stories featuring a host of strange character. The novel consists of three of the student’s seemingly unlinked stories that introduce characters such as Furriskey who is a fictional character created by the equally fictional Trellis, a writer of Westerns. As the narrative progresses, the student’s characters seem to take on a life of their own, and the novel becomes an absurdist brew of Irish folklore, farce, and comedic satire.
Flann O’Brien was born Brian Ó Nualláin in County Tyrone, Ireland in 1911. After studying at University College Dublin he joined the Irish Civil Service, during which time he wrote novels in both English and Irish Gaelic, scripts for television and theatre, and newspaper columns as Myles na gCopaleen. He died in 1966.
Paul Fagan is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University, where he is working on the Irish Research Council project Celibacy in Irish Women's Writing, 1860s-1950s. He is a co-founder of the International Flann O’Brien Society, a founding general editor of the Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies. He is the co-editor of Finnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories, Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities, as well as five edited volumes on Flann O’Brien.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Flann O'Brien:
An Béal Bocht (1941)
The Hard Life (1961)
The Dalkey Archive (1964)
The Third Policeman (1967)
The Best of Myles (1968)
By others:
The Golden Ass by Apuleius (c. 200)
The Fenian Cycle (from c. 600)
The Madness of Sweeney (c. 1200)
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-15)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1623)
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift (1704)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)
The Crock of Gold by James Stephens (1912)
Orlando by Virginia Woolf (1928)
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)
Travelling People by BS Johnson (1963)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino (1979)
Lanark by Alasdair Gray (1981)
Blooms of Dublin by Anthony Burgess (1982)
A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers by Hugh Kenner (1983)
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski (2000)
Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)
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LINKS
Finnegans Wake: Human and Nonhuman Histories, edited by Paul Fagan and Richard Barlow
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re getting the intel on Catch-22 by Joseph Heller from our guest Spencer Morrison.
Catch-22 takes us back to the dying days of the Second World War and introduces us to Yossarian, a US Air Force bombardier who is stationed on an island off the coast of Italy. Yossarian’s traumatic missions are contrasted with his life on the base, which is populated by various oddball airmen who all have their own agendas. They are overseen by commanding officers who are more concerned with abstract bureaucracy and arbitrary rules than the reality of the war. When Yossarian attempts to get out of flying any more missions he is faced with the most insidious rule of all, Catch-22, which states if an airman flies missions he is crazy and doesn’t have to, but if he doesn’t want to fly missions then he is sane and has to.
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1942, he joined the US Air Force and served as a bombardier on the Italian Front, his experiences informing Catch-22. His first published story appeared in Atlantic magazine in 1948 while he was working as a copywriter for an advertising firm. He went on to write seven novels, a collection of short stories, three plays, three screenplays and two volumes of autobiography. In the 1970s he worked alongside Anthony Burgess in the Creative Writing department at City College New York. He died in 1999.
Spencer Morrison is an assistant professor of English Language and Culture at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, where he specializes in post-WWII American literature. His writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in journals such as American Literary History, ELH, American Literature, and Genre, and he's currently completing a book manuscript on fifties and sixties American literature and culture that includes a chapter on Joseph Heller.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
By Joseph Heller:
Something Happened (1974)
By others:
The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek (1921)
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1932)
The Gallery by John Horne Burns (1947)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)
The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney (1950)
From Here to Eternity by James Jones (1951)
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor (1952)
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)
The Organization Man by William H Whyte (1956)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
The Thin Red Line by James Jones (1962)
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (1996)
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)
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LINKS
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re learning about The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury, with our guest Joseph Williams.
The History Man tells the story of Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at a modern campus university. Howard is a strident and radical political voice on campus who dominates both his fellow lecturers and his students with his opinions and encourages sit-ins and protests for all manner of causes. Howard is also morally compromised: he has affairs with his female students while simultaneously bullying his male students, and his frequent lies destroy his colleagues’ careers even as they bring him success. Burgess calls The History Man ‘a disturbing and accurate portrayal of campus life in the late sixties and early seventies.’
Malcolm Bradbury was born in 1932. He wrote six novels, of which The History Man is the most well-known, having been adapted for the screen in 1981. He also wrote a novella, a collection of short stories, several well-respected books of literary criticism and many scripts for television. He also set up the famous MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, which launched the careers of Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro among others. He was knighted for services to literature in 2000 and died the same year at the age of 68.
Joseph Williams is finishing a PhD at the University of East Anglia, researching the creative, critical and educational work of Malcolm Bradbury, Lorna Sage, David Lodge, and the journal Critical Quarterly. He has taught at UEA and now teaches for the Workers Educational Association, most recently a course on Ulysses. As a reviewer he has written for Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator, and Tribune, and in 2023 he was appointed reviews editor at Critical Quarterly.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Malcolm Bradbury:
Eating People is Wrong (1959)
Stepping Westward (1965)
The Social Context of Modern English Literature (1971)
The Modern American Novel (1983)
The Modern World: Ten Great Writers (1988)
The Modern British Novel (1993)
By others:
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)
Loving by Henry Green (1945)
The Great Tradition by F.R. Leavis (1948)
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis (1973)
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975)
Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally (1975)
Changing Places by David Lodge (1975)
How Far Can You Go? by David Lodge (1980)
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
Money by Martin Amis (1984)
Small World by David Lodge (1984)
White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)
Nice Work by David Lodge (1988)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
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LINKS
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, we’re exploring the complex, controversial and language-rich novel Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux with our guest, writer George Salis.
The novel tells the story of Alaric Darconville, an English instructor at an all-girls’ college in Virginia. He is intensely romantic and intellectual, and eventually falls in love with one of his students. He views their relationship as a great love affair, but his romanticism blinds him to reality. Eventually, he meets the mysterious Dr Crucifer, an unrepentant misogynist who attempt to brainwash the younger man to his way of thinking.
Alexander Theroux was born in Massachusetts in 1939, and is the author of four novels, four collections of poetry, three collections of short stories and several works of non-fiction. His most recent publication is the collection of poetry, Godfather Drosselmeier’s Tears & Other Poems.
George Salis is a novelist, literary critic and editor. His novel Sea Above, Sun Below was praised by Alexander Theroux as having ‘electricity on every page’. He is the editor of The Colliderscope, an online publication that celebrates innovative literature, and the host of its companion podcast. He has recently completed his maximalist novel Morphological Echoes.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Alexander Theroux
Three Wogs, including 'Theroux Metaphrastes' (1972)
Laura Warholic (2007)
By others:
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Girls at Play by Paul Theroux (1969)
Plus by Joseph McElroy (1977)
Love in a Dead Language by Lee Siegel (1999)
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LINKS
Sea Above, Sun Below by George Salis at Amazon
The Collidescope, George Salis's website
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Graham Foster discovers Nadine Gordimer’s 1966 novel The Late Bourgeois World, with guest Jeanne-Marie Jackson.
The Late Bourgeois World tells the story of Johannesburg suburbanite Liz Van Den Sandt, who finds out her ex-husband has committed suicide after betraying his comrades in the burgeoning rebellion against apartheid. Though she lives a privileged life with her new partner, she begins to feel drawn towards political action. When she is asked to help the Black Nationalist movement with their finances, she has to choose between her own safe but boring life and the exciting but risky act of rebellion. But does her ex-husband’s failure prove the futility of political action?
Nadine Gordimer was born in the Transvaal region of South Africa in 1923. She moved to Johannesburg in 1948 and lived in the city for the rest of her life. She published her first novel, The Lying Days, in 1953 and went on to publish 14 more novels and over 20 books of short stories. Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She died in 2014.
Jeanne-Marie Jackson is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focusses on African literature and intellectual history. Her first book, South African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation was published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Her most recent book, The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing was published by Princeton University Press in 2021. She has written for the New York Times, New Left Review, and The Conversation, among others. Her latest book, as editor, is a critical edition of J.E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Nadine Gordimer:
The Lying Days (1953)
Burger's Daughter (1979)
July's People (1981)
'Living in the Interregnum' in The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places (1988)
By others:
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (1862)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
The Ripley Series by Patricia Highsmith (1955-91)
The Necessity of Art by Ernst Fischer (1959)
Muriel at Metropolitan by Miriam Tlali (1975)
Edith's Diary by Patricia Highsmith (1977)
Amandla by Miriam Tlali (1980)
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999)
The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2018)
The History of Man by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2019)
The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu (2022)
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LINKS
South African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation by Jeanne-Marie Jackson
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to Brian Boyd about Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Pale Fire, which Anthony Burgess called ‘a brilliant confection’.
Pale Fire is unlike any other novel. The first section of the novel takes the form of a 999-line poem, by a murdered poet called John Shade. The second section concerns the discursive commentary and notes by Shade’s supposed editor, Charles Kinbote. Seemingly unconnected to the poem, Kinbote’s notes describe his belief that he is Charles the Beloved, the exiled king of a country called Zembla. Can this be true, or is Kinbote a fantasist? Does Shade’s poem really reference the revolution in Zembla? Is Shade even real? These are just some of the questions raised by this rich and puzzling novel.
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St Petersburg in 1899, and being of aristocratic heritage, was exiled from Russia when the Bolsheviks seized power. Having studied in Britain, he settled in America in 1940, lecturing in Russian literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Cornell University in New York State. His novel Lolita, published in 1955, brought him fame, and was filmed by Stanley Kubrick, from Nabokov’s own screenplay, in 1962. Nabokov died in Switzerland in 1977.
Brian Boyd is University Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and one of the leading experts in Nabokov’s work. His writings about Nabokov include Nabokov’s Ada: The Place of Consciousness, Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, and two volumes of biography subtitled The Russian Years and The American Years. He is currently working on a biography of the philosopher Karl Popper, along with a follow-up to his On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction; a book on Shakespeare’s plays; two books on Lolita; and a continuation of his annotations, a chapter at a time, to Ada, already almost 2500 pages, with about 500 to go. He is also co-editing Nabokov’s Lectures on Russian Poetry, Prose, and Drama.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Vladimir Nabokov:
The Defense (1930)
Lolita (1955)
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969)
Transparent Things (1972)
'The Vane Sisters' in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995)
By others:
Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux (1725)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
The Joy of Gay Sex by Edmund White (1977)
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk (2015)
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LINKS
Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery by Brian Boyd (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
International Anthony Burgess Foundation Newsletter
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell explores Anthony Burgess’s new collection of essays on music, The Devil Prefers Mozart, with editor Paul Phillips.
The Devil Prefers Mozart is the first collection of Anthony Burgess’s essays on music and musicians. This wide-ranging anthology covers classical, modern and operatic works, as well as jazz, pop, heavy metal and punk. This episode of the podcast discusses the versatility of Burgess’s writing on music, the different sorts of essays in the new collection and what Burgess really thought of the work of the Beatles.
Paul Phillips is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies and Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University, and author A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess, the definitive study of Burgess’s music and its relationship to his writing. Paul has contributed essays to six books on Burgess, including the Norton Critical Edition of A Clockwork Orange, and is an Honorary Patron of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and its Music Advisor.
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LINKS
The Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess by Paul Phillips (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Anthony Burgess News, our free weekly Substack newsletter.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to writer and publisher Richard Cohen about his memories of working with Anthony Burgess in the 1980s.
Richard Cohen is the former publishing director of Hutchinson, and was instrumental in publishing some of Burgess’s best known novels of the 1980s, beginning with The Pianoplayers in 1986. After working at Hutchinson, Richard moved to Hodder, and eventually set up his own company Richard Cohen Books. During his time in publishing he worked with authors as varied as Jeffrey Archer, John Le Carre, Kingsley Amis, Fay Wheldon. Sebastian Faulks, and Rudy Giuliani.
As a writer, Richard has published four books of non-fiction: By the Sword, a history of swordplay; Chasing the Sun, an epic history of the Sun; How to Write Like Tolstoy, a guide for writers; and Making History, a history of historians from Herodotus to the present day.
Richard was also an Olympic fencer, competing in Munich, Montreal and Los Angeles between 1972 and 1984. He won both a gold and bronze medal for fencing at the 1970 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
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LINKS
Making History: Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)
By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)
Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)
How to Write Like Tolstoy by Richard Cohen (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Andrew Biswell exploring the making of the new documentary film, A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, with the directors Elisa Mantin and Benoit Felici.
A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, is the first new documentary to focus on Burgess for 25 years. Drawing on archive footage, startling new animations, and interviews with major cultural figures such as Will Self and Ai Weiwei, this documentary reconsiders the 60-year history of A Clockwork Orange as a novel, film, stage play and cultural influence.
LINKS:
To watch the French version, Orange méchanique: les rouages de la violence, click here.
To watch the German version, Clockwork Orange: Im Räderwerk der Gewalt, click here.
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Sign up to our free newsletter
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, we hand the microphone over to Anthony Burgess himself, as he gives a special festive reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our listeners! We'll be back in 2024 with more podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, we’re exploring a parallel universe Glasgow as we talk about Alasdair Gray’s Lanark with writer and biographer Rodge Glass.
Lanark is a strange, experimental book that immediately thrusts the reader into a weird world with glimmers of familiarity. It’s a novel with two stories, that weave around each other but don’t quite come together in an obvious way. It begins with the story of a man called Lanark, whose lonely existence in the city of Unthank is eventually disturbed when his skin begins to grow dragon scales. This story is interrupted by that of Duncan Thaw, who remembers his journey to become an artist, studying at the Glasgow School of Art and struggling to get by painting murals around the city. What, if anything, is the connection between Thaw and Lanark?
Alasdair Gray was born in Riddrie, Glasgow in 1934. He began studying at the Glasgow School of Art in 1953, where he started writing Lanark. He graduated in 1957 and painted murals around Glasgow. Many of his murals have been lost, but some can still be seen around the city. Most famously, his mural at the Òran Mór theatre is the largest public artwork in Scotland. Alongside his career as an artist he wrote nine novels, five collections of short stories, and several works for the theatre. He died in 2019.
Rodge Glass is the author of seven published books across fiction, the graphic novel, the short story and nonfiction, including Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography, which won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction, and his new book Michel Faber: The Writer & his Work, published by Liverpool University Press in August 2023. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and was the Convener of the 2nd International Alasdair Gray Conference hosted in Glasgow in 2022. He works closely with the Alasdair Gray Archive on creative commissions, academic work and on building Gray's legacy internationally.
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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
By Alasdair Gray:
'The Star' in Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)
1982, Janine (1984)
The Fall of Kelvin Walker (1985)
Poor Things (1992)
A Life in Pictures (2009)
By others:
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)
'The Crystal Egg' in The Country of the Blind and Other Selected Stories by HG Wells (1897)
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography by Rodge Glass (2009)
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LINKS
Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography by Rodge Glass (affiliate link)
Michel Faber: The Writer & His Work by Rodge Glass (affiliate link)
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.
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