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Past Present Future
The Great Political Fictions: Lea Ypi on The Wild Duck
Season 2, Ep. 89
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The writer and political philosopher Lea Ypi talks about the impact on her of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (1884), which she first read when she was eight – thinking it was a children’s book (it isn’t!) – and has been returning to ever since. A play about family and betrayal, idealism and disappointment, temptation and self-destruction, is it also a parable about the illusions of politics? And how might it shake a person’s faith?
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Next time: Helen Lewis on To Kill A Mockingbird
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