The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Rebecca Solnit: Changing the Story, Changing the WorldIn this powerful in-store conversation, Rebecca Solnit joins Adam Biles to discuss her new book No Straight Road Takes You There — a rallying call for hope, justice, and the reimagining of our collective future. With wit, clarity, and courage, Solnit explores how stories shape our world — and how changing them can change everything. Drawing on decades of activism and deep historical insight, she challenges despair, celebrates solidarity, and reminds us that even in dark times, “we are always in the middle of the story.” From climate crisis to the power of protest, from Silicon Valley dystopia to unexpected beauty in community, this conversation is a galvanizing reminder: the future is unwritten — and it’s ours to shape.Buy No Straight Road Takes You There: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/no-straight-road-takes-you-there*REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of more than twenty books, including Orwell’s Roses, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, The Faraway Nearby, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism, social change, hope, and the climate crisis. She lives in San Francisco and writes regularly for the Guardian. She lives in San Francisco.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup with a novella that spirals into the psychological suspense of a possible murder next door. As the narratives bend and mirror each other, Lacey explores the porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction, faith and doubt, intimacy and estrangement.The conversation dives deep into Lacey’s creative process, her early entanglement with religion, the disorienting legacy of male anger, and how the pandemic shaped her understanding of confinement and rupture. Candid and philosophical, Lacey reflects on memory’s distortions, the ethics of writing memoir, and the liberating act of leaving questions unanswered. Buy The Möbius Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-mobius-bookCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

Trigger Warning: This episode contains detailed discussions of child sexual abuse, rape, trauma, and the failures of the justice system.In this powerful and deeply affecting conversation, Neige Sinno speaks with Adam Biles about her landmark book Sad Tiger, recently published in English in a luminous translation by Natasha Lehrer. A searing literary interrogation of the years of abuse Sinno suffered at the hands of her stepfather, Sad Tiger explores the limits of testimony, the insufficiencies of language, and the deep societal denial that silences victims. Sinno reflects on the ethics and formal challenges of writing about trauma, the intellectual and emotional paradoxes of bearing witness, and how literary form can both expose and protect. The conversation touches on Nabokov’s Lolita, the myth of the “monster,” and how society colludes in refusing to see evil when it wears a familiar face. Courageous, lucid, and unflinching, Sinno’s presence and insights make this an unforgettable episode.Buy Sad Tiger: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/sad-tigerNeige Sinno is a French writer who has studied American literature in the United States and Mexico, and worked as a translator and literature professor. She is the author of two previous books, Le Camion and La Vie des rats. Born in France, she has lived in Mexico for the past 20 years. Her 2023 book, Triste tigre, won several of France’s top literary prizes and became the publishing sensation of the year. It will be published in English as Sad Tiger by Seven Stories, in a translation by Natasha Lehrer.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this rich conversation, Guadalupe Nettel joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to explore the themes of her short story collection The Accidentals. They delve into the complexities of perception and the uncanny, the deep strangeness embedded in familial relationships, and the porous boundary between nature and human nature. Nettel discusses how her stories often begin with a striking image and unfold through a character’s voice, frequently taking shape in the liminal space between realism and the fantastic. The conversation touches on the lasting psychological and social effects of the pandemic, the emotional and moral ambiguities of parenthood, and the hidden influence of family histories. Nature—particularly animal behaviour—serves both as metaphor and mirror, challenging the illusion of human superiority. The episode also examines the short story form, translation as reincarnation, and literature’s power to illuminate the cracks in our perceived reality.Buy The Accidentals here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-accidentals-2Guadalupe Nettel is a Mexican author of award-winning novels and short story collections. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted for theatre and film. Still Born, her most recent novel, was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize. In 2008 she received a PhD in Literature from the EHESS in Paris. She has edited cultural and literary magazines such as Número Cero and Revista de la Universidad de México. She lives in Paris as a writer in residence at the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Interview Podcast, Adam Biles welcomes Philip Hoare to the bookstore for a mesmerizing conversation about Hoare’s latest book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. With characteristic lyricism, Hoare explores the mystic intersections between Blake’s visionary art and poetry and the siren call of the ocean. The discussion flows through queer longing, mythic imagery, and the enduring pull of nature and art. A haunting, moving, and often playful exchange—as unruly and evocative as the sea itself.Buy William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-moon-is-a-watery-star*Philip Hoare is the author of ten works of non-fiction. His Leviathan won the Baillie Gifford Prize, and the New York Times praised his last book, Albert &; the Whale, as the result of ‘the forceful weather system that is Hoare’s imagination’. Writing in the Observer, Laura Cumming called his writing ‘the animating magic that brings people of the past directly into our present and unleashes spectacular visions along the way’. He lives in Southampton, on the south coast of England, and swims every day in the sea.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this episode, Adam Biles is joined by writer Dan Richards to talk about his new book Overnight, a deep dive into the world of the night and the people who live and work while the rest of us sleep. From ferry captains and bakers to ICU nurses, researchers, and racing drivers, Richards explores the unseen rhythms and quiet heroism of nocturnal life. The conversation touches on the origins of the book—an unexpected night stranded on a mountain with his father—and how a life-threatening experience during the pandemic reshaped his understanding of vulnerability, care, and community. With warmth, wit, and poetic insight, Richards discusses circadian myths, the industrialisation of sleep, bats, and the benevolence of those who keep the world turning in the dark. Overnight is a tribute to those who inhabit the night, and this conversation shines a light on their often-unseen contributions.Buy Overnight: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/overnight*Dan Richards is the co-author of Holloway (with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood), and the author of The Beechwood Airship Interviews, Climbing Days, Outpost and Overnight. Only After Dark, a BBC Radio 4 series about the nocturnal world, was broadcast to acclaim in 2022. Dan has written for the Guardian, Economist, Esquire and Monocle.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this episode, Adam Biles is joined in the bookshop’s writing studio by Anna Whitwham, author of Soft Tissue Damage, a raw and electrifying memoir of grief, boxing, and womanhood. Following her mother’s death, Whitwham trained and fought competitively as a boxer—an act of both healing and reckoning. She discusses how physical pain can become a language for emotional anguish, how class and family history shaped her connection to the sport, and how boxing offered a surprising community of tenderness and care. A conversation about loss, rage, strength, and the power of being witnessed.Buy Soft Tissue Damage: https://roughtradebooks.com/collections/books/products/soft-tissue-damage-anna-whitwham*Anna Whitwham was born in 1981 in London, where she still lives. She studied Drama and English at the University of California, Los Angeles, Queens University Belfast and at Royal Holloway, London where she teaches a course called ‘Writing Men: The Burden of Masculinity’.She is the author of Boxer Handsome (Chatto&Windus). Her latest book, Soft Tissue Damage is published by Rough Trade Books.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

In this episode recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, celebrated Danish author Solvej Balle returns to the bookshop she once called home to discuss her monumental literary project On the Calculation of Volume. The novel’s protagonist, Tara Selter, finds herself reliving November 18th—again and again—opening up a profound meditation on time, memory, isolation, and human existence. Balle reflects on the decades-long journey of crafting this work, the philosophical underpinnings of time loops, and the quiet radicalism of writing it from a female perspective. Touching on everything from Ulysses to Groundhog Day, to quantum physics, she shares how her character emerged through a process of deep listening and experimentation. Tara's attempts to replicate seasons and find meaning through repetition prompt larger questions about how we process time, our relationships, and the rituals that structure our lives. Balle reveals how a “stupid idea” turned into a seven-volume epic currently shortlisted for the International Booker Prize—and how writing it has transformed her own understanding of life, aging, and narrative possibility.Buy On the Calculation of Volume: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/on-the-calculation-of-volume-i*Solvej Balle was born in 1962, made her debut in 1986 with Lyrefugl, andwent on to write the highly-acclaimed According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind (praised by Publishers Weekly for its blend of “sly humor, bleak vision, and terrified sense of the absurd with a tacit intuition that the world has a meaning not yet fathomed”). She’s also published a book on art theory, a political memoir, and two books of short prose. On the Calculation of Volume expands the possibilities of the novel and heralds the arrival of a major literary artist.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah sits down with Adam Biles in store to discuss his new novel, Theft. Their conversation delves into the intricate interplay between personal history and the enduring legacy of colonialism, examines the complex dynamics of family and servitude, and discusses the challenge of transcending inherited narratives. Buy Theft: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/theft-2*Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) The Last Gift, Gravel Heart, and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University of Kent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-englandListen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3wAuthor portrait Hugo Clair Torregrosa (c) Shakespeare and Company Paris