After hearing last month from Korea, market focus for this year's London Book Fair, the Books podcast turns its focus a little closer to home, travelling to Earls Court to investigate writing across the English Channel.
According to Stefan Tobler, publisher at And Other Stories, the continent is home to some of the most exciting voices in fiction – voices which Peirene Press's Meike Ziervogel argues are at their strongest when they reflect the patchwork nature of European culture.
Back in the studio we find two novelists who epitomise this variety. The French writer Marie Darrieussecq burst on to the scene in 1996 with her slim novel of transformation and lust, Pig Tales. Thirteen novels later she returns to themes of change and self-knowledge in All The Way – a harrowing account of a young Basque girl going through puberty.
Peter Buwalda is a Dutch author whose literary career is only just beginning. He explains why his debut, Bonita Avenue, is a family saga fit for the internet age – and how the digital world raises the stakes for the deceptions at the heart of domestic life.
Reading list
Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda (Pushkin Press)
All the Way by Marie Darrieussecq (Text)
