Joining John & Andy for this episode are the novelists Andrew O’Hagan and Rachel Joyce. Born in Glasgow, Andrew has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and won the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His fifth and latest novel, Mayflies has just been published by Faber.

Rachel is the author of the international best sellers, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The Music Shop and Miss Benson’s Beetle. Her books have apeared in thirty-six languages. She has been longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and was awarded ‘New Writer of the Year in the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards.

The book under discussion is Thérèse Raquin, the third published novel by the great French master of naturalism, Émile Zola. Originally serialised in the literary journal L’Artiste under the title A Love Story, it was first released in volume form as Thérèse Raquin by Albert Lacroix in 1868 and despite some famously disparaging reviews became an immediate bestseller and established Zola’s literary reputation. Bepfre that, Andy expresses his enthusiasm for Robin Muir’s exhibition catalogue for the National Portrait Gallery show Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’ and, after thirty years, John finally finishes his reading of Eduardo Galeano’s epic history of the Americas, Memory of Fire.

Books mentioned:

Émile Zola - Thérèse Raquin; (translated by Adam Thorpe); Germinal; L’Assomoir; Nana; La Bête Humaine; The Masterpiece; The Experimental Novel & Other Essays
Andrew O’Hagan - Mayflies; The Illuminations; Our Fathers; Be Near Me
Rachel Joyce - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry; Perfect; The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy; The Music Shop; Miss Benson’s Beetle
Robin Muir - Cecil Beaton’s ‘Bright Young Things’
Evelyn Waugh - Vile Bodies
Radclyffe Hall - The Well of Loneliness
Eduardo Galeano - Memory of Fire: I: Genesis: II: Faces & Masks; III: Century of the Wind
Michael Rosen - The Disapperance of Émile Zola
Adam Thorpe - Ulverton
Angus Wilson - Zola
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment