Fictionable

In this Spring series of podcasts we've heard from Jenny Erpenbeck, Grahame Williams, Lauren Caroline Smith and Rose Rahtz. We bring it to a close with Jakub Żulczyk and his story Many Years of Hardships, translated by John and Małgorzata Markoff.Żulczyk became a bestseller with hard-hitting thrillers such as The Institute and Blinded by the Lights, a semi-autobiographical novel which the author turned into a hit show for HBO. But Many Years of Hardships draws on deeper roots."One of my first memories from childhood is my grandmother telling me stories about little dwarfs," Żulczyk explains. His hero, Big Barrel, is one of the characters from the Polish imaginary, a krasnoludek only two inches tall.A lot of Żulczyk's writing comes from "dark places", he continues, but in Many Years of Hardships he gives his twisted sense of humour free rein. "At the heart of it all, it’s a funny story."But there's a serious side to Big Barrel's struggles with food, doggos and a shadowy figure pulling all the strings. Surrounded by war, powerful corporations and the climate crisis, the dwarf's predicament feels all too familiar. "We live in a world now where everyone feels like this," Żulczyk says.The challenges we face may be acute, but the author remains an optimist."Totalitarian structures, or power structures, or violent structures ultimately fail in confrontation with powers that are open-minded, that have freedom of thought, open channels of communication and so on."

This spring we've already heard from Jenny Erpenbeck, Grahame Williams and Lauren Caroline Smith. This time we welcome Rose Rahtz and her short story Where Hast Thou Been, Sister?Rahtz tells us how the story started as a response to the opening of Macbeth, where there is a roll of thunder and Shakespeare's First Witch asks, "Where hast thou been, sister?""I've always really liked the witch's response, because she's so perfunctory about it," she says. "She just goes 'I've been killing swine, obviously, I'm a witch'."Thinking about female power and powerful children, Rahtz transported Shakespeare's blasted heath to a farm park and turned his witch into a toddler. There's something mighty about a small child, she explains, "It's that tug between huge power of emotion and complete impotence within the world."Channelling her eldest daughter, who was a "force of nature" when she was young, Rahtz sets her uncanny toddler loose – though she insists that no animals were harmed in the making of this story.Witches are outlaw figures who disrupt the patriarchy, Rahtz continues, and writing is a kind of disruption to her job as an English teacher. While the GCSE English language paper is a "horrorshow" where children are being asked to dance a grammatical jig, "the joy of being an English teacher is you teach around the edges of the curriculum".

In this Spring series of podcasts we've already heard from Jenny Erpenbeck and Grahame Williams. Now it's time for Lauren Caroline Smith and her short story The Placing of Hands.Smith looks back on her teenage years, when being a committed Christian made her something of an oddity, and reflects on what it’s like to be a person of faith within a predominantly secular culture.Our culture is very individualistic, Smith says, so if you're following Christ, "you’re not following the culture… to be so fully part of it is kind of rebellious."We're being persuaded all the time, she continues, in politics, fashion or wider society – "primarily to buy things". But when churches put the focus on converting young people at large-scale events, religious persuasion can tip over into manipulation."They make you kind of vulnerable," Smith says. "There's all this music playing, there's people praying for you, there's people telling you how you should feel… That can become spiritual abuse."She's still not sure where she is in her journey of faith, but Smith says that books can often play a similar role: "For me it's often the same thing."

Last time we heard from Jenny Erpenbeck, who told us that before her latest novel Kairos she'd "never written a love story". This time we welcome Grahame Williams and his short story Making It Happen.Like the industrialist Sir John Harvey-Jones, an inspirational figure in Making It Happen, Williams says he's not much of a planner: "If there's a spark, then let's just start writing and see where it goes."He didn't set out to tell the story of the Troubles, but – as in his own childhood – they loom over Quinton McCandless's life as an "ever-present threat"."Stuff was going on, heinous things happening," Williams says, "that constant reminder that we live in quite a difficult and strange place."Growing up, he didn't have "a very sophisticated understanding of the Troubles", Williams adds, and there was always an expectation that he would leave."My story was, I left Northern Ireland and the narrative was fulfilled," he says. "But what happens if you don't leave, if you have to stay?"Living with a young family in England, Williams says he really feels "that distance from home… There's an ache, there's a pain that comes from having left."Despite this sense of loss and the many troubles that beset Quinton in Making It Happen, Williams says he maintains a sunny outlook on life: "I'm definitely an optimist."

Spring has finally sprung and with it another series of Fictionable podcasts. Over the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Jakub Żulczyk, Grahame Williams, Lauren Caroline Smith and Rose Rahtz. But we launch into Spring with Jenny Erpenbeck and her haunting short story Sloughing Off One Skin.When we spoke down the line from Berlin, Erpenbeck began by reading from the opening of the story in German as well as in Michael Hofmann's supple translation. Sloughing Off One Skin is set in motion by a piece of paper – a false passport – and Erpenbeck admits she's always been "suspicious of documents"."Paper is not just paper," she says, adding that it's "a surface, and under the surface things can happen. They are shifting, they are moving. The surface stays unmoved."Erpenbeck explains how Sloughing Off One Skin ends with a spooky coincidence drawn from life – "in a way this is a ghost story" – and confesses she struggled with the ending for her novel of the refugee crisis, Go, Went, Gone."I couldn’t see any kind of end to the story," she says, "and so I thought I’ll write down a solution that obviously is no solution, so that readers can understand there is something left to do."Borders loom over Erpenbeck's latest novel Kairos as well, which charts the dissolution of the border between East and West Germany in 1989. The author recalls the strange dislocations of changing countries while remaining in one place. "Outside became inside, or our outside wasn’t there any more."Erpenbeck adds that she has a "strong connection" with questions of memory and "how times are interwoven with each other"."I wanted to become an archaeologist when I was young," she says, "so I’m still digging."

We've already heard from Linda Mannheim, Richard Smyth, Ariel Marken Jack. and Robert Neuwirth in this Winter series of podcasts. Now we bring it to a close with Liam Hogan and his short story Backstory.Hogan tells us how it all came from his suspicion of heroes. "They often have it far too easy," he explains. "If you have someone with supreme skills then… what's the challenge?"There's a dark thread running through his collection of short stories, Happy Ending Not Guaranteed, but Hogan says "there has to be an element of humour".Literary fiction may have a problem with comedy, but Hogan is unabashed: "It's the puncturing of pomposity, which is just fun."