Joining Andy and John for this episode is the novelist, Sarah Perry. Sarah first appeared on Backlisted episode 43 in which she talked about Edmund Gosse’s Victorian memoir, Father & Son. Sarah is the author of the novels: After Me Comes the Flood, The Essex Serpent, and Melmoth. Her most recent book is Essex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere, a defence and celebration of the Essex girl stereotype (described by the Guardian as ‘a polemic that makes room for both Kim Kardashian and Harriet Martineau’). She was born in Essex, and now lives in Norwich, where she is working on her fourth novel. 

The book she has chosen to discuss is Silence by Shūsaku Endō’s masterpiece, a novel following two Jesuits posted to 17th century Japan in search of their former teacher, now feared to have apostatised. Silence was first published in Japan as Chinmoku in 1966 and was translated into English by William Johnston in 1969 (Sophia University Prees, Tokyo) but didn't appear in the UK (from Peter Owen) until 1976. It won Japan’s most prestigious award for original fiction, the Tanizaki Prize, in 1966 and is generally considered to be Endo’s masterpiece and has been adapted for stage and screen several times, most recently by Martin Scorcese in 2016.

Also in this episode John enjoys The Appointment, a mordantly funny debut novel by literary agent, Katharina Volckmer and Andy wallows in the profound comedic achievement that is From the Oasthouse:  The Alan Partridge Podcast.

Books mentioned:

Shūsako Endō - Silence; Foreign Studies; The Samurai; Scandal
Sarah Perry - Essex Girls; Melmoth; The Essex Serpent; After Me Comes the Flood
Katharaina Volckmer - The Appointment
Thomas Bernhard - Woodcutter
Alan Partridge - I, Partridge; Nomad
Graham Greene - The Power & The Glory; The End of the Affair
Caryl Philips - Cambridge
Feodor Dostoevsky - Crime & Punishment

Other links:

Sarah Perry on Essex Girls in the Guardian
From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast
Alpha Pappa (Alan Partridge movie, 2013)
17th century Japanese shepherds song (Ushikata-bushi)
Excerpt from Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
John Updike’s review of Silence in the New Yorker (1980)
Flower Travellin' Band - ‘Satori I’