29 min listen
Elif Shafak is a novelist, political scientist and essayist. She has published 21 books – 13 of which are novels – and her books have been translated into 58 languages. Her most recent novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, is out now. On the podcast, Elif tells Liv about the significance of food and drink in her writing, the many places she takes culinary inspiration from and reveals her love of heavy metal music.
Barbara Comyns’s reputation rises and falls like a Mexican wave, making her one of the most rediscovered novelists of recent times. She’s credited with anticipating Angela Carter and for being in the vanguard of tackling themes of traumatic dissociation and the realities of childbirth. Yet younger, trendier writers have regularly eclipsed her. Aged 29, Barbara was broke: a single mother who’d weathered affairs, an abortion and a suicide attempt Every fan remembers their first Comyns novel: the visceral jolt of black humour, the suckerpunch of stark horror. Knowing that she drew from life, we have longed for a biography, and hooray, it’s finally here. Avril Horner, emeritus professor of English
