236. What Remains by Hannah Arendt
Elif Shafak and Lyndsey Stonebridge join John and Andy for a discussion of the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the historian and philosopher whose books include The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This being Backlisted, we approach Arendt's formidable oeuvre and truly extraordinary biography via an intriguing route: her poetry. The book Elif and Lyndsey have chosen for this special episode is What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt (Norton), published in November 2024. Arendt wrote poetry from a young age; she kept the manuscript of many of these poems with her as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, in the camps and on the boat to America. What did they represent to their author? And as the world finds itself once again grappling with the threats of populism and totalitarianism, what can we learn from Hannah Arendt? We hope you will enjoy this fascinating, thought-provoking conversation as much as we did.
Elif Shafak's new novel There are Rivers in the Sky (Penguin) is available now. Lyndsey Stonebridge's We are Free to Change the World: Lessons in Love and Disobedience (Vintage) was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2024.
Books mentioned
Hannah Arendt - What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt; The Origins of Totalitarianism; The Human Condition; Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil; On Revolution, On Violence; On Men in Dark Times
Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky; The Island of Missing Trees; 10 Minutes 38 seconds in this Strange World; The Forty Rules of Love
Lyndsey Stonebridge - Placeless People:Writings, Rights and Refugees; The Judicial Imagination: Writing after Nuremberg; Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights; We are Free to Change the World: Lessons in Love and Disobedience
Walter Benjamin - Illuminations
Samantha Rose Hill - Hannah Arendt