Why are generations at war with each other? With Zadie Smith

[Music] Hello and welcome to Ask Penguin, the podcast that's all about books and authors. I'm Rihanna Dillon and this week I'm in conversation with an author and I've been a fan of for a very, very long time. One of the most distinctive, exciting and widely loved writers of her generation, winner of the women's prize, shortlisted for the booker, she's been twice named among Granta's best young British novelists. Her debut, White Teeth, blazed onto the bestseller lists and established her as a defining generational voice 25 years ago. Her follow-up work includes the critically and commercially acclaimed NW on beauty and swing time. Zadie Smith's latest work is Dead and Alive, the keenly awaited new collection of essays in which she brings her unique skills and observations to bear across a dazzling range of subjects. From a close-lecker artist, Toyy and Oji O'datola, Cara Walker and Celia Paul, to a trip to the movies to see and to think about Kate Blanchett's tar, or to Glastonbury's pyramid stage to witness the ascendance of Storm Z. From the countryside to the city, we're taken on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North West London and invited to mourn with her the passing of writers, Djondidian, Martin Ames, Hilary Mantell, Philip Roth and Tony Morrison. Zadie Smith, welcome to Ask Penguin. We're really, really delighted to have you here. Thanks, come in. Thank you. So, I've already given a brief overview of some of the subjects that your essays touch on. It's so wide-ranging, which is also gorgeous about it, and it gives the reader a real sense that you are curious about absolutely everything and anything. Is that how you feel as you go through the world? Do you feel as though you are a very curious person? I don't know. It's hard to know how other people are. I'm just me, so it feels normal to me to be interested in stuff. I am interested in stuff, but I don't think to an unusual amount. I don't think of myself as a connoisseur or anything like that. I just like books, like movies, like music, like everybody. You have written a lot of essays over the years, but you never set out to be an essayist, I suppose. So, how did that come about? Has it taken you by surprise that you have. It was just a job. I was writing novels, and then I was kind of flattered when somebody asked me to review something. I was so green, and I didn't expect anybody to be interested in my views on anything. So, is that how you think of it as reviews, primarily, how it began? I don't know. It's hard for me to talk about it. I don't really bring it to mind very often. I just sit on my desk and I do what's in front of me. If I think about it too much, I get really self-conscious. So, publication is hard for me. This whole period is hard for me, because I've just always rather kind of been writing. Right. I think I realized, as I started, that there's a lot of different kinds of writers. You just have Carl over here. He's another one, he likes to think about things. There's lots of different kinds of novelists, and he's got a kind of. I would say a slightly philosophical bend, and sometimes the novel won't contain the things you want to think about. I love his essays, but I think his essays come out of a very pure place. He just wants to think at length. And I guess I do that under the guise of, you know, you want 5,000 words or something. Okay, here's 5,000 words. Right. I really like your introduction, because you're sort of trying to ease the reader in who might not necessarily be a non-fick reader. So, tell us about that. Tell us how you do that and why. I just really feel that there's no idea that so complicated you can't find open and kind of shared language to talk about it. And that's always what I'm trying to do, because I'm always thinking about, you know, the kind of people I come from, the kind of background I come from. So, I just wanted it to be open. You know, it gets complicated. Like writing is not like, you know, always MV musicians. Like, you don't need a certain level of educational comprehension to understand even the greatest music that has ever been made classical or rap or pop or whatever it is. The kind of door is wide open. Obviously writing isn't quite like that, right? At the very minimum, you need to be able to read. And then there are layers of complexity of levels of reading. And of course, I'm aware of that. But I still think, just as a principle of like democratic access, that you should try and make a sentence, you know, as open as possible. That's what I try to do. I don't always succeed, you know. I guess each subgenre of writing has its own, I don't know, accessibility issues. Do you think there are issues around the word essay? Do you think that in itself is intimidating to people? I don't know. People seem to be reading a lot of essays these days. Online, all they do is read essays. So, I think maybe that idea of it as an academic matter has kind of passed, actually. People seem to me to find essays a lot less daunting than fiction. Fiction is like this. You have to bring quite a lot to fiction, you know, this energy for this imagined world, whereas essays don't ask you to do that for the most part. So, I think it's the other way around these days. Hmm. I kind of really love how you encourage your reader to dip in in any order they want. I mean, you don't have to read the book at all, sorry, Penguin, but if you do read it, you don't have to read it in any particular, like I really do always want readers to feel as free as possible. And that also includes like the rejection of all of it. But then you also, I guess, by putting it together, you have to shape it in some way. So, you've kind of grouped them in five sections, eyeballing, considering, reconsidering, mourning and confessing. So, tell us about the umbrella terms. How you came up with those. You know, I always do it quite quickly, that kind of thing, titling and because it's subconscious, you know, it kind of comes from your gut. And I don't want to think about it too much. So, I just kind of looked to what I had in front of me and, you know, I'm quite a simple writer, just say what I see. I'm just sort of section of things that seem to me like confessions, others are obviously about looking at things, others are about thinking about things. So, I just tried to make it basic, and also because I know that people who aren't interested in visual arts, for example, some people are more interested in ideas, some people want to know about your life, the life of a writer. So, I tried to make it easy for people to move through it. And also, just for me, it's a way of kind of organizing a book. Like, I guess I never thought of my book to Vestays, it's just random essays. They always have a shape. And mainly the shape is when I come to add things. So, I never plan to write a book of essays. What usually happens is Simon, who's my editor here, says something like, "Oh, you know, you've got a certain amount of essays, have you thought about collecting them?" And my first reaction is usually, "I don't want to do that." And then he kind of persists a little bit, and but then the condition of course is that you can't just publish all the essays. So, then usually there's this thing about, "Well, can you write six or seven or ten more?" And I usually really don't want to do that. But then once I get started, the ones that you add start to bring a shape to the book as a whole. Right. And also, usually when I'm writing the book, somebody sent me a new task, you know, a magazine or a journal, so then you end up writing something again, and that sometimes can go in. So, it's just a kind of, I follow my gut really. I'm not, I know some essay books are more like, like a single argument, I guess, or but mine are really just about where my head's been over the period of time. Community feels like something that comes up. Yeah. Has one about community in New York. Yes. About people coming together. Also, there's like your final essays about Kilburn, yeah, which is really affectionate and gorgeous. So, how does the city, as a place, whether it's in London or New York or both, how does that influence you as a writer, people coming together in the city? It's two things for me. It's community for sure, that that word is overused everywhere. It's true, yes, true. But also, like privacy. Those two things, to me, are together in the book. I feel like that's what a human needs. They need to be amongst people and in relation to other people, but they also need privacy. So, for me, I feel incredibly lucky, usually, that I have this job that involves a lot of privacy between me and the reader. It's not filmed, it's not live, it's just someone in their room with my book, having whatever feeling they have. And I like to write essays that are kind of aware of that intimacy and kind of recreate it. It's just you and me in a room. I like that. And that you go back to your own self and I can't intrude. I can't collect comments or wonder what you're thinking. And I go back, likewise, when I'm not in a podcast, my life and have that moment of privacy. You recorded the audiobook near. It's the craziest thing, but this audiobook studio happens to literally be not even. I would say it's about five and a half seconds from my front door. So it's incredibly convenient for me. I don't know how it is for all the other writers in the world, but yeah, it's strange. It's a strange coincidence. I have no idea why it's in on the top of Salsby Road, but it is an I live on the corner, so it's easy. Is there something kind of lovely about talking about Killburn while you were recording in Killburn? It was weirder than that. It's one of these kind of. I grew up in the flat behind that studio and that studio was just garages. I was a kid and a kind of wasteland where we would go and um we actually doesn't matter what we go to. But from from the podcast window I could see my old flat. I can see the communal space of that estate. So it was weird. Yeah, that was a really weird experience. Yeah. When you're writing because it does feel like sometimes we're between two communities or two worlds or whatever. Do you find yourself in a sort of liminal space between the UK and the US when you're writing and does yours sort of nearness to one? I mean, not anymore like me and me and the US are, you know, broken up for the time being. I'm, you know, there between Wilson and Brunswick, Queen's Park and Kilburn. These are essays from an earlier period for the most part. I don't know. It's funny. When you said liminal space, I didn't think you were going to say between New York and London. I thought you're going to say between Rita and writer. I guess that's where I feel a lot of the time like I know I am a writer. I've been doing it for long enough, but I feel myself like on the readers side of things collegially speaking. How does that inform your writing then if you're more on the readers side? Are you constantly thinking about their interpretation? No, but I want to be on their side and I want to kind of make space for them. And I want to be generous to them. Like sometimes you read people and you feel like you're being almost punished, right? Or disapproved of all the writer has contempt for you in some way. Or I don't enjoy that experience. So I want these essays to be somewhere where you feel smart as you read them, maybe or you feel like something is broadened as you read them, rather than being shut down. Was there anything, as you said, some of these essays are from the past. Yeah. So returning to them, were there kind of things that you've forgotten about that you really enjoyed sort of relearning, re-remembering? Oh, it's weird with essays. Like they'd always seem smarter than you are or more interesting than you are. Or I think when you're writing them, you're in a heightened state, you know, of thinking and feeling. Normally I'm not in that heightened state. I'm just like anyone else, I'm just vegetating on a sofa or doing whatever. You know, there's a gap between me and the essay quite often. Like I'll read it and think, oh, okay. It's quite good. Good thought or whatever or interesting. Yeah. But it feels quite distant sometimes and it depends. Some of them are, you know, about such sad things or things that are so anger-making or one of the things that writing is always for is to contain a feeling. You know, you get it off of you and you contain it in this thing. So when you reread it, you have all those feelings again. But my main feeling, like reading out loud, I'd very rarely read an audio, but I think I've done it twice in my life. But I thought a distance, like, okay. Yeah. Which is about as good as it gets in my head. I was like, okay. You did that. Do you have the same experience with your fiction? I don't reread my fiction. So once it's sent off. Yeah. I mean, I had to read the fraud as an audiobook with double braces on my teeth and the very bad Scottish accent. So it was like a week and a half. Really, it was a struggle. But most writers don't reread their work generally. I'm not unusual in that. Like there's just no time and why would you and there's always something else to do. So an audiobook is like a rare opportunity to kind of be confronted with yourself. I didn't know. I didn't know how many people writers or not would like to be confronted with themselves for seven hours a day for a week and a half. I don't think anybody would be that job by doing that. But I was proud. You know, I was proud of some of the essays were hard to write and there was a lot to put in, particularly the Taw essay that it's hard to write, but I've moved that long with so many aspects. And so I was glad that I kind of did it. The Taw essay, 'Cause I was working film and TV, was really fascinating. And it was really nice reading it now after a couple of years as a past. Because obviously in the moment there's always a lot of heat. Yes. Yeah. And then my essays are certainly for the time when the heat is passed and you're able to think for yourself. Tell us about the, 'cause you talk about artistic monsters. And in a way you're sort of reflecting on the way that we deal with those artists. And also in a way, cancel culture as well, although you never use that term. But tell us about kind of reflecting on that a few years after the fact, even though the issue goes on. I mean, that wasn't really what interested me about the movie. The movie I like, but it's not really about whether the movie's good or bad or whether I like it or not. It's whether it's symptomatic. That's what interested me, the reactions to it and everybody's mania around it. That's always what interests me more than the thing in itself practically. It just interested me, certain structures of discourse interested me. Like it's perfectly obvious to me that there should be, you know, violent and antagonistic discourses between people who have completely different contingencies. So between black and white, there's always going to be this antagonism. You can't become black, I can't become white. But the funny thing about the age discourses is that you are fighting people, you're about to become tomorrow. It literally makes no sense. And that's what kind of made me laugh is that the idea that this age discourse is so violent. Like what do you imagine is about to happen to you? And wouldn't you allow a discourse that allowed for the fact that you too, like genuinely faster than you can imagine, are going to be 40, than 50, than 60, than 70? Wouldn't you like to make a landscape that allowed for your own existence? That's what made me laugh more than anything. It's just such a crazy structural error. Like you are going to become this person. You also were this person. So some sympathy and compassion on both sides would seem practical and humane. Yeah. Do you think that is the curse of every generation though? Well, it happens every single time. Well, exactly. So do you think the conversation will ever move on? No, but you can find more humor in it. Like I remember, for my generation, we had the people of the 60s who were genuinely intolerable, going on about their wonderful youth and their free love and the amazing music. And you wanted to kill them. But I also remember simultaneously, secretly, you were jealous. I remember that. Oh, you were. I was jealous. I didn't want to hear about Winston-Archandre John Lennon and Jimmy Hendrick. I didn't want to hear it. But at the same time, in the privacy of my own life, I would listen to it. And I, but I didn't want to hear my parents talk about it. I didn't want to hear anybody. It's a double movement, always. It's always love and hate. And it's normal, it's natural. Yeah. I mean, try to hang my dad up when he's talking about seeing Jimmy Hendrick on stage. Yes, and then you know it's 90s nostalgia. And actually, I'm from the 90s, and 90s nostalgia drives me up the bend as well. It's just what people do. And it's fine. It doesn't have to be such a violent argument. I also really love the way that you talk about adolescence. I mean, obviously, in your vision, but also kind of depictions of yourself as a teenager. But do you think the, I don't know, the intensity of the experience of being a teenager now is very different from when you were growing up? No, I think it's exactly the same. It's just weaponized in a different way. It's just got a different medium. But the teenagers, the teenagers, there's nothing so unusual about these ones. They just have a different medium in which to experience all the feelings of adolescence. So no, I don't think it's so different. The structure is different. But the human is not, it takes us a long time to actually change, you know. The evolving of a millennia, not generations. Yeah. Is it just, do you think that we have access to how teenagers feel more than we ever used to perhaps? We now, any generation can hear about how a teenager feels, whereas presumably before is either if you're a parent or a teacher or yourself a teenager. I don't know. We always had a lot of music. We always had a lot of access to teenager emotions. I don't really find that to be the difference. And I actually would not exaggerate. And I think about the kind of behaviour, modifying structures that we're all in. I wouldn't put it on teenagers. I've seen grandmas more modified than the average 12-year-old. So I don't think it's a teenage problem. Yeah. There's a really lovely Celia Paul quote that you use, which is, I've always been and I remain at nearly 60 the same person I was at a teenager, which I think is just usually relatable, to be honest. How does that present itself in what occupies you? That's a really weird role this is all about because you're being spoken to as if you know things. And I don't feel that way. I don't have that experience. Like I'm some great. I just don't feel that way. A lot of me does feel that a listen. I think a lot of the thing which is maybe unsaid by a lot of writers, but seems to me true is that particularly if you publish young and you stay writing, it's a very childish occupation. And a lot of things that real adults have to deal with, primarily colleagues and a workplace every day with people that you're up against. The world is something you're up against. A writer sitting in their room for 25 years is up against some things, but mainly themselves. And the main trait I notice in writers is childishness, to be honest. I don't dislike it. I love writers. They're some of my favourite people. But I would be wary of imagining that there's something other than that. I think their teenage lives are very, very strong in them, particularly novelists. I'm not talking about like serious writers, you know, who write books about facts and science. And that's a different matter. But what we're talking about is a very particular kind of person and they're kind of adjacent to actors. And that's another group of people you shouldn't try and get wisdom out of. That's a very good point. I mean, you talk about, you write about Stormzy or King Michael as you go. Yes. How do you think that we can get wisdom from musicians then? I just think what they do is my It's the same, but it's more intense and it's more direct, and it's more effective. You know, when people die at their funerals, they're not reading out passages of Zadie Smith's songs. It's poems, very much doubted. It's what people actually feel in there for lack of a bit of word, souls. That's just how I feel about music, like I love Stormzie. There's a rapper from my neighborhood that he's worked with called Nux, who's from the other bit of Kilburn, from the I'm from North Kilburn. He's from South Kilburn. And if you listen to one Nux album, that's like eight novels. It's just a very intense form, because it has so much more, I don't know why, maybe it just gets to you into your emotions so much quicker. You don't have to have this high bar of, you know, a certain kind of literacy. So I find music very affecting, and I love to write about musicians, and I love to admire them, because I genuinely do. How do you use music in your writing, in your fiction writing, in your. I don't, man, because of copyright. When I first started writing white teeth, it was full of hip hop lyrics, and then Penguin said to me, "How'd you like to pay 200 grand for these hip hop lyrics?" And I was like, "No, I've made the mistake a few times. I can own beauty, I left lyrics in, and it cost me a lot of money." It was a NAS lyrics. So I don't do it anymore. It's a real tragedy, actually, because it would be lovely for novels to be filled with music, because I think a lot of novelists have this experience of music, but it's expensive. Yeah, I use somebody that needs music. Not when I'm writing, never, I just listen to brown noise, but I need music in my life, yeah. Sure. When you were sort of early in your career, you cited writers like Don Delilo, others in that post-modern grouping, that was very admirable. As you've grown, grown up, have you found that your literary influences have changed at all? Or are you still influenced by the same things that you. No, I love it when you were young. No, things just, you know, die for me. I just don't read any of those books anymore. I always want something new. So it's a mixture. My reading is a mixture of a lot of debut writers, I guess. I read a lot of new things. You know, it's just anything. Anything that comes through the door, anything that right now I'm reading, I, I, I, Slandic, epic, which by the guy who won the Nobel Prize in the 30s, I've just never read it before, how do I lack some of this is the name. It just has to be good. Like, I don't have a particular genre or kind of writing. I'm just trying to stay as open as possible to anything that comes through the door, yeah. Is there someone who's book recommendations you really trust, like you will read anything they tell you to read? My taste sort of. They just depends. They're different people I rely on for different things. That's the best way I can put it. So it just, it just depends. I have people who are really good at recommending to me, like, you know, West African literature. I have people I know who know all about Japanese writing. It's that kind of thing. I know who to ask for what I'm in the mood to read. Yeah. I'm sorry to use another quote. Yeah. From your work. But you, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. Yeah, that's not me. That's Flan and Reena Kona. That's what you pulled out. And it is a really powerful one and it obviously resonated for you and I think it resonates for so many. But how do you think that writing, anyone's writing, can offer in quite difficult or turbulent times, not just politically, but. You know, a lot of it is, if we're honest, like, that's what I'm right about. Fones, I write from a personal experience of escapism. Like, I understand why people want to look at their phones 12 hours a day, because I want to look at a book 12 hours a day and it's not that different. So a lot of it's escapism, but it's also a quiet like today. You know, you always have a choice. I could spend three hours getting wound up online or I could lie on my sofa and read this Icelandic epic about a man and his wife in a sheepcroft. I just find my brain is calmer then. And I go into the world with a different attitude and a different insight. It makes me think in a different way. And all the books I read do that service for me. It's just like, I can be somewhere else. It's just a different kind of news. Like, I read this wonderful book called "C.C." by Emily M. Profite. She's a Haitian writer and it's, if you read that, it's very good. And it's about what's happening in Haiti right now, but about the lives of some of the poorest people in Haiti and it's unexpected. It's kind of funny, it's incredibly violent. I could listen to that news on the world service. I suppose I could click for it online. But I had it from the inside. I had it in this novelistic form and, you know, it's what I always say. It's not like some magic pill. Like, I empathise with C.C. in this book and I suddenly rushed to Haiti to solve all the Haiti's problems. That's, everybody knows fiction doesn't work that way. But I would make the claim and I do feel it that I read this book in some part of me next time. It's open to this situation. My eyes, my ears, my heart. I'm not hearing it. I'm not hearing just, oh, this is happening in Haiti. I know something about it now. And even if it's only fictional or virtual or it means something to me and to me that's what fiction can do. I don't experience that confidence as a writer. I never sit down thinking, oh, here I am, opening up the world. That doesn't happen. But as a reader, I feel it all the time, all the time, with all kinds of books for all kinds of reasons and from all over the world. Do you experience fear when you're writing? I mean, it's more like self-discussed. I think that's the more accurate description. There's a book just came to my door this morning by Elizabeth McCracken. It's written a book about Croft. She's a wonderful writer in America. And on the second page, she has like two pages about self-discussed. It's a very common in writers, I think. Like who were you to sit and, bam, bam, bam, bam. And then here on a podcast, more of it. And, you know, it's not, maybe when you're young and you're 24, it seems really exciting to talk about yourself with strangers. But over time, it really is not something that makes you feel particularly good. And I think that can expand to, you know, the very idea of writing a book. Like the bottom line is who cares? You know, that's what everybody thinks when they sit down to write a book. And why should anybody care what you have to say? And that is a hard thought to keep out. But I don't know. It's a compulsion to me to write. I've realised now at this late stage. So what I can do is just keep going and, yeah. How do you allow that to not cripple you then? I don't write for months and months at a time. Sometimes I don't write. You know, the anything that's consistent in my life is reading. I read every day and I feel really bereft if I don't get to read. But almost never happen if I can't take a day in my life. I don't at least read a page or two. But writing, you know, if I feel really bad about it and I, then I just don't do it. Don't stop it, Quinn. They might hear it. I just don't do it as essentially the truth. But I don't know. I think as I've got older, I am more anxious. That's just, I guess, being my age and the menopause. And certainly more depressed. Like it does. I think when you're young, you think writing is going to solve something for you. It just doesn't do that. But then all kinds of artists I talk to, like, I saw little Sims recently as something and I found myself saying to you know, it's not for you. It's for other people. And she kind of nodded like she knew what I meant. And that's how it is. It's like, it's not going to secure you of anything. But as a reader, you know that it might, it does sometimes, it's good for readers. Like I know as a reader that I'm grateful that people write. I'm really grateful. Yeah. So we have a couple of questions, kind of general questions that people have been really keen to find out more from you. So some of our listeners have commented that it feels like your work has moved from a place of optimism to exploring darker corners. Do you think that's a fair observation? And if so, what do you think prompted that? I mean, I think you'd be a very strange human if you called her. You didn't get slightly more pessimistic, given what's hidden to you. You know, at the speed of not, of course, the times are as dark as they can be. Though actually that's, you know, listening to Tarni Heasy recently on a, as a reclimes podcast, he makes the point that they're actually not as dark as they can be. The dark times are a continual matter in America, particularly their consistent and there have been many. So it's important to historicize it and remember on the arc of things, this is very bad, but it can get worse. So there is that. I don't know. I mean, I, white teeth, is it optimistic? It's definitely funny. It is. And I'm writing a funny novel right now. And so I don't feel kind of lost from funny-ness. Things still amuse me all the time. It's hard sometimes to convince yourself that there's any point in such a small funny novel as I'm trying to write now. But then again, when I read them, I'm like, "Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you for writing this. Thank you for writing my day in some form or reminding me of the joy that is everywhere if you look closely." So I don't think it's the one way journey for me. But certainly in the essays, particularly writing about things like climate, like, you're angry. It's hard to disguise anger when you're that angry. Yeah. And you have children and you're looking to the future. Everybody has that feeling of despair. I just try and, you know, something unusual about my feelings. All I'm trying to do is articulate them in a way that other people can use those words for something, you know, for their own, incoherate feelings. Yeah. You just mentioned white teeth and given it's the 25th anniversary this year, it feels like a lot of people are going to be revisiting it, talking about it. I'm guessing you can teach. Yeah, it's annoying. Is that happening? I mean it's extremely aging to have a book that's 25 years old, wondering around. Even my children aren't that old. That's like. Does it feel like a child of yours in a way? You're one of those writers. I mean. I don't know. I was a child when I wrote it so I just feels like a weird thing that I did. Yeah, essentially a weird thing. Yeah. How has the anniversary felt for you? What has it thrown up? Anything? It's crazy. I mean the one difference I really did make, which I think is quite psychologically to me, is kind of a big difference. It's that in my study I never kept any of my books. I never liked to have them around and I get them to my mum. Poor mum is drowning in them all. In a basement or anyone who will take them usually. And then when it came out I thought, "Well, you know because you spent 25 years basically not looking up. That's kind of how I would describe writing like time passes. I was aware of time passing but I was always thinking of this other book I had to write. And not really to be fair, nothing to do with Penguin saying kind of another book. Just because in my mind there was this. almost pre-ordained line of books that had to be written so I just, that was my job. But when this happened I kind of stopped him. I was like, "Okay, well, what was that as Lord says? What was that?" And I got a copy of each book and I just put it by the wall near my desk. So now when I look to the side I can see these, you know, whatever they are, 13 or 14 books. And it's okay, like it's quite a nice feeling. I guess I was always scared of them. I don't know what, narcissism or self, like just being. So I always wanted to keep it out of my view. But now when I see them I'm like, "Okay, it's kind of nice that that happened and I am proud." Yeah. So it's nice to see them. And one of our listeners asked if there were any multi-generational novels that inspired White Teeth in the first place. White Teeth is mostly ripped off from London Fields, isn't it? I would say, if you look at those texts closely I'm sure. I'm a known Martin felt that way. That's, there's a lot of London Fields. It isn't really a multi-generational novel but it is a kind of big messy novel about London. I didn't know, you know, I'd been reading at that point. I was studying. So there was a lot of Victorian novels, a lot of Elliot and that kind of thing. Beloved, maybe. It was that kind of scenario. Like there were books, I was reading on that scale. Are there any of those social ones that you particularly enjoy the multi-generational novels that you could recommend? Oh God. I would say ridiculous thing about being a writer when you actually asked to recommend a book. It's as if no books exist in the history of the world. Never in one. I mean I, one of my favourite writers remains Tolstoy, you know, I. Yeah. Those books are unbelievable to me. Yeah, any Tolstoy. I don't have multi-generational terms, a particular love of mine but I do, like I just read to Amanda which I guess is five women. I do love a large spread of a novel and I'm quite, I'm very cheered recently. Have you read the new brand and Taylor? No, I know. Yeah. That's also, I mean it's just about two levels really but it's got this kind of novelistic scope that makes me really happy that people still think it's worthwhile, you know, writing not a chic little novella but a novel you could live in and spend time with and miss these people and love them when they're gone. Yeah. I think we were talking about that on another podcast and I think the last time I felt like that was probably the Beast-ing. Oh amazing. I mean Paul is amazing. That is an amazing book. Yeah. God bless you. I really miss those characters and living in that. It was great and it was a really good example and a novel doesn't have to be, you know, it's nice if a novel is chic, great and it looks good with what you're wearing and you took it on the tube but it's also nice. Sorry, if people do that, I think they do. But it's also nice when you're just completely immersed and you miss your stop because you're with these people. It's a great thing. Yeah. This is another question that's come in. Was there a particular book that you read that made you decisive about becoming an author? Was there one that felt like a real turning point? I always say the same. I'm just repeating myself. I'm so old and boring at this point but there's a book called Hurricane which is by a Jamaican writer called Andrew Salky. He's kind of a kid's writer but also an adult's writer who was Jamaican and it's just about a hurricane is coming. They've been warned. The island has been warned and it's just about the kind of lead up to the hurricane and then the hurricane actually happening. I think I read it when I was about 10. I don't know if I'd seen a Jamaican hurricane at that point. I definitely saw them later but it was like a little introduction to my mother's island and there's so much anticipation and so much kind of old-fashioned novelistic like this thing is about to happen and then it happens. It's so simple really but I absolutely loved it. I remember thinking that the feeling it gave me something I would like to create in people which I then went on to not do a tour but novels with almost no plot that did not do that in any way. It feels like 10 is such a prime age for falling in love with yeah with I mean from a young age of course but 10 feels like you're making decisions more for yourself. It's really key and also it's sometimes like as an adult writer I think sometimes you can wish you could go backwards and change some of your influences but it's not something can be done you know it's really interesting to me like thinking about someone like now's God I can see similarities in our work which are about a joint interest in certain things certain writers to make substantialist and this and that but then there are places I went to with a child he never would have read in this but so that's where these suddenly these other landscapes open up and it's just so interesting that every writer has that in them and when you meet other writers you can see the little vent diagram of where you meet and you can also see where you separate yeah and I don't know it's just interesting. You're talking your one of your essays about how no one externally or at least not any educational institution had given you a book where you felt like you saw yourself and so that kind of had to come from you yeah I mean there were no there were absolutely no black writers anywhere on the syllabus when I was a kid and none in university and none of that anyway but I don't mean to say that I was deprived because my mother was a very great collector of diaspora literature so yeah came from your mother exactly the flat was kind of heaving with black writers of all kinds and she was friends with Margaret Busby who so that was the kind of lucky thing in my life and she knew like she knew Benjamin's F and I people I didn't realize who they were until I was an adult but some of the go to Wilson library and people like that would be talking and I was always aware my mom knew some of these people and certainly knew Margaret so it didn't feel like a denuded world but I was lucky. Well I was going to ask as a parent then yourself did you feel a responsibility? Well not even a responsibility I guess it would have just been a natural thing but were you thinking about the books that you wanted your children to read that you knew were going to shape and influence them? I guess I don't think of reading that way like I'm always glad like when you said see yourself that's not exactly how I think of it because I don't think white readers move through the world thinking they see themselves in characters I think it's a kind of narrow concept for us I was glad to know more about the diaspora because I come from it but that's different from seeing myself like the characters in Zorin and Hussin are not me or Antonio Morrison and Alice and Walker they live in a completely different life with a completely different history but there's a kind of cousin diaspora history that's of course I'm interested in so in our house you know there's a load of Irish writing there's a load of Caribbean writing but there's a load of everything and I guess I want my kids to enter the world of literature as open as possible like I was very aware of identifying myself all over the place in sometimes very inappropriate places and in that you know when I read Baldwin for the first time I felt so seen as the key share goes because he said the same thing he said this is all mine yeah it's all mine from Mozart down to the cathedrals and whatever it is if it's if it's human it's mine and to be honest that's how I feel about human cultural production it's too impure there's too much exchange all the time to pretend that this corner is yours and that corner is theirs to me it's all mine I have my particular interest of course because I have my roots but it spreads all over you mentioned you were writing a novel at the moment I mean when I said I've written four pages of it and I was late for this because I suddenly lost track of time and never happens I haven't written in so long so I've written four pages of a novel yes that's true so what can you tell us anything about it is there anything that is coming out after this between no you know I really would I you know I how do I put this like I I am embarrassed sometimes to have published so much I don't mean to I like to write so be better if I just wrote and just kept to myself and then published occasionally so I think it'll be a while before you see me again that's the good news yeah well dead and alive and all of Zadies are the titles are available now from wherever you get your books thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you so as well as our author interviews one of our favourite bits of the podcast is answering our audiences questions and requests and regular listeners will know that we always spend some time thinking about book recommendations so we will send you away with a very long list of exciting new reads to discover so joining me to help answer some of those questions are our penguin colleagues Nile for a Brian and Kaya Shang hi welcome to Ask Penguin Hello. Hi. It's really really lovely to me both. Thank you for coming on. Now before we get into the books themselves Can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Penguin? Star with you, Kaya? Yeah, so I'm a commissioning editor at Chateau and Windr. It's one of the imprints within the vintage division Which essentially means that I work with authors, I buy books and I publish them Which is a really creative and enjoyable job. Sounds so much fun. That I think is possibly the job that I'm most envy So, here at Penguin, what about you now? Am I going to be envies of your job as well? Maybe, maybe. I'm an audiore editor and so do the audiobooks for all of vintage and all of Penguin press. So I work with Kaya sometimes, actually. Quite a lot. Yeah, quite a lot. She's got great books. So this involves casting the book, reading it, finding the right voice for it, And then spending some time in the studio, getting the turn right, and Yeah, just finding the sound for the book and then all the other administrative stuff which we don't need to talk about. So obviously to listen to, having an audiobook with a full cast is incredible, very exciting, very cool. I imagine a hellish to put together. It can be. It can also be a joy when people, you know, You've got six people who all love the same thing. Yeah. Bringing their own perspective and their own take on it. Yeah, it can be joyous, but oh, it's logistically different. Yeah, I'm freaking out. Good, very diplomatic answer. It's a book that you aren't really excited to see come out this year, for people to read or to listen to. Yeah, it's on focus because I've worked on it. And it's kind of like I'm selling it, but that's what everybody does that. The Yannis Verifuckis raise your soul. And it follows five women in this family from his mother's, his grandmother and others. And their experience with imprisonment, fascism, in Greece in the early 90s, and how that shaped him into the revolutionary, hardcore revolutionary years today, and him telling you the story, oh, it's beautiful. I thought I had enough of this period of history, but him telling me was amazing. And it's all in Greece. So he talks about Athenians and Manolimpas. Oh, wow. This is like a mythological tale. It's brilliant. Yeah, can't wait. Oh, I'm really excited for that as well. That's incredible. Yeah, I haven't read it yet, but he came into the, one of the great things about working here is brilliant authors coming all the time and just turn off upstairs and we get to hear them. Could you do it today? No, no, a couple of years ago when I first asked if he came in and spoke about this book. Same thing. Just to see the idea for it. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it stuck with you over those few years. Yeah. Kalia. What am I excited for? It's cool. Yeah. So many things. I feel like it'll be remiss to not mention Margaret Atwood's incredible memoir, Book of Lives, which is coming out. It's autumn. Great. What remarkable women and remarkable, wonderful life. And that's a big part of what we do at Chateau, like really inspiring, trailblazing women. So I love that. I have to mention that, but Margaret Atwood is not going to be a hard sell. No, I think. Okay, so we have some listener questions. Our first one is a really easy one. What are you reading at the moment? I'm embarking on big rereads of a lot of books, so hugely inspiration. Also, me and I as in my early 20s. How come what's prompted that? Just seeing how I read them now. These were sort of like, like, life-old training for me. So I'm rereading everything by Don Delilo, who is one of my favorite writers ever. I'm currently on Libra, which I think is his finest work. I actually think I used to prefer like Underworld perhaps. Yeah. But I'd like it to go, but so yeah, I'm reading a lot of them. What I consider classic. Oh, fantastic. That's very cool. That's very interesting to see like what someone, particularly someone like Delilo, obviously, was, you know, writing these amazing systems, novels like, what would something like that look like now? Like, what would be the invention of that genre of the, or that's the version of it, or taking it on to a new place in 2026, 25? Has anything surprised you from the rereads? Just how good they are. Maybe I took that for granted. No, what about you? The one I'm reading that I'm most enjoying is a reread of a book called The Fall of Lines, which is book 16 or 17. In a series called Malazan Book of the Fall, which is published by Transyl. And it's like a high fantasy, completely original world that I read with my brother. I'll start a reading with my brother maybe 10 years ago. And I'm rereading book number 16 or 17, because the next one is about to come out. After like a seven, eight year gap. Oh my goodness. It's probably the best book I've ever read. But I try not to mention it in polite conversation, because people would have to read 16 or 17 books to get there. So it can't be read as a standalone? Nah, absolutely not. Although, you could read the book before and read that one and come away with something. But you've been missing out on that. You've been missing out on a lot, a lot of context. But just fabulous writing. Incredible writing. It's a great cell to say it's one of the best books that you've ever read. There's a lot of books. 16 books before I just could not at this point. I don't think. But I would absolutely recommend everyone go and check out book one. Just like the gardens of the moon. Beautiful. Because you know that's the gateway. Somebody said, "I'm really interested in real life stories and on the lookout for memoirs." So do you have any favourites that are life or perspective changing? You can't have Margaret Atwood again, Clare. Yeah, I do have a couple. I adore just kids. For a Patisserie, it's a really obvious choice. No, it's I think I'd mention it briefly. I think it's so beautifully captured. It's what it feels like sort of searching inside of you. But we're talking about I guess life or perspective changing. I want to mention there's a Chinese writer and film maker called Shaoli Guo, who was not as worked as well. And she wrote a triptick of memoirs spanning growing up in extreme poverty in rural China, moving to the UK, grappling with language, with being an artist and a mother, with connecting to the history of her adopted nation. And so she's written this incredible trilogy. And she plays with language and form in such inventive ways. And she's also lived such a singular life that I would highly recommend her right to anyone. I was really blown away when I read her first memoir, "What's Photon?" These like many years ago. That's a really, really great recommendation. Thank you, Nile. I think I would recommend "Hishan Mataas," the return, which I read not so long ago, much to my shame. I should have read it five, six years ago, and it came out. But this changed my life and perspective. And I remember reading a particular passage about a Libyan poet that Hishan Mataas referring to. So the book is him going back to Libya for the first time. To find out what the regime did with his father, which he already knows. But he needs someone to tell him the state of works. But they refuse to. But he talks about a Libyan poet from the early 1900s who was taken by the Italians in prison, forbidden pen, paper, or probably pen, sort of paper. And composed of 30 stands of poem, which he recited over and over and over again. And this transfer through the walls and the prison gates to other prisoners who also began through a cider. And he was then whipped many years later for inciting belief into the rebellion through those 30 stanzas of poetry, which he created in his prison cell. And this is just to me, this is why I do what I do. The power of words is beyond anything that anyone can control. So yeah, he's really great on words and why I need to be told my father was taken by you, even though he knows this, this change. So you've got to say something, you've got to hear it said. So everything he writes to me on a small, unbelievable, huge community. He's just going, he's just talking about it. Like, he's kind of I'm reading the book would be like. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Really? It's just a fuck. So this person has said, "I'm currently reading books from writers of colour, so can you recommend any authors and books from writers of colour or from the Caribbean in particular?" The one I'd love to talk about a little bit is Passion Tide, which is by Manik Raffi who wrote the Mammade of Black Conn, a couple of years before. But this is her most recent book in 2024. And it is about Trinidad, and about Femiside and Trinidad, about a Japanese steel pan player who's killed at the beginning of the novel. And by her death. I'm starting to realise all my novels are books, I'm just quite political. Anyway, a revolution begins, and women from across Trinidad, there's sex workers, journalists, the wife of the president we get her perspective to. They start to come together to protest, to combat, bring eyes to this ongoing problem of Femiside. But really, what again, I'm talking about audiobooks because I love audiobooks. And what really is in the book is that kind of irionist, because I guess it's all about murder and Femiside, and you hear the steel pans throughout the book as a kind of ghostly refrain because the woman who's been killed at the beginning talks back to us throughout the book. And in the audiobook, there's original musical score. Oh, incredible. Played by kids on the steel pans. That kind of, yeah, it really brings you to the place. But yeah, it just, it made me feel like I could be a revolutionary too. or maybe if you're getting together. I'm making things happen, yeah I don't know. Thank you. Oh there's a couple, I love this question, thank you to whoever asked it. I just wanted to mention, this is a classic actually, but like invisible man, Ralph Ellis, and I think like everyone should read that book. I think it's one of my top 10 books of all time, so if you happen, I would really, really highly recommend. And then I also wanted to mention Purs for the Everett, but some of his lesser known words, they've been a fan of him for ages and ages and, of course, you crossed everyone's just jumped on the bandwagon with the last couple. No, I'm thrilled. So, so deserves that recognition, but yeah, I'd really encourage people to go through his back list, particularly over at what I am not Sydney Porsche, which actually is concerned with some of the, I would say arguably some of the same things, and it's just so funny and so intelligent and yeah, I think one of his best works, so yeah, I'm sure everyone's heard of him now, it's his great, but I'd really recommend going through, he's really prolific in each book, it's so unique. That's a really great one, thank you. As we're in book award season, the Book of Prize winner announcement is just around the corner. What is your favourite prize-winning book that you'd recommend to others? That's a tough question in terms of winning. I often love the ones that make the short list and don't win, but I'm going to mention them. I'm never going to go on a podcast or do anything without talking about Rachel Kitchener. I'm so sorry. It's creation late. No, well, yes, but also the Mars Room. I think that is one of the best novels I've ever read. And I think it really combines what David Foster Wallace was talking about and he was lamenting a lack of novels that both like challenge and entertain and move and provoke and I think that does all of those things and it's just so much fun to read and I'm really rooting for flesh as well on the book. Hopefully, yeah, but I thought that was really phenomenal. Yeah, agreed. I've been shoving flesh down people to reach that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fingers crossed, fingers crossed. I'm going to have to say orbital because I've been a huge fan of Samantha Arden since the shapeless Anise or even before the Western wind, but orbital is fabulous because number one, it's slim. And lots of my friends are not readers and lots of my friends are not interested in space and looking at the world from an outside perspective literally. So this was very, very at least on the surface accessible, but I mean, if anyone's read all of this all, they'll know that once you open it, it's not a one day book, you really got to take your time with it, but I thought it was incredibly clever in its construction, beautiful in its reflection and also like tender with each of the astronauts on the space station. I love to and I love her. I think everyone should read more of that. The world and this is amazing. I read that recently. I still will always be talking about the safe keep. Just can't stop again talking about shoving books and people's stories. Have you read this? Have you read it? It's so easy to read it. It's so short. Please read it. And our final question from the listeners is, can you share some of your favourite books with autumn settings and that's from Astrid? Oh, I found this so tough. I was thinking about this because I was wondering of this person wanting sort of cozy autumn reads and I was like, I'm such a not cozy person. But I think my idea, sort of my interpretation of autumn reads would be obviously campus novels have a kind of beginning for a lot of the time or feature for. So from the obvious ones like the Secret History Stoner, perhaps a certain sort of classic but also maybe there's some kind of lesser known ones. One of my favourite novels ever is The Incentiaries by Auro Kwon which is technically sort of a campus novel. It's one of the finest stylists of our time to be honest. So campus novels obviously gothic classics are quite, they're not sort of technically with an autumn setting but they have that kind of slightly horror, slightly Halloween experience of them. Autumn by Alice Smith. It's not so much a setting as the symbolism but obviously it's an incredibly beautiful work. Yeah, I struggle with a big time with this as well. And this is super roundabout we have to forgive me because it's all I've got. My favourite part is John Keese and he's got this beautiful poem called Two Autumn but my favourite John Keese poem is actually a Hyperion and there is a book called Hyperion by Dan Simmons which is not set in autumn per se. And the second book is called The Fall of Hyperion so you've got Fall in there. Oh my goodness. It's the kind of next. People know for Two Autumn but Hyperion is beautiful because this is getting round about but it's like the cantor retails and space and there's a priest and there's a text in it. We just don't even know about Keese's second ago. Yeah, yeah. And there's a poet. There's a poet that is like a cyber facsimile of Keats. Oh I see. And the book Geology Turns on the Poem Hyperion so it follows that line and it's about the end of humans as we know so you can say the end of the summer as we know it which is kind of like awesome. I love it. I love it. I'm sort of lost but I love it here. I like read it in stick license that you took with that question. They're not thinking Dracula. You're nice. I love Dracula. I love Dracula. Thank you so much to everybody who submitted a question and thank you very very much to Zaydie Smith, Nile for A Bryan and Kaya Shang for coming to speak with me. It's been so lovely to have you all here. Links and information on all of the books that we've talked about today are available in our show notes and you can find lots more episodes and loads of other recommendations on the Penguin Podcast feed and do subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening and I will be back in a fortnight. Until then, happy reading.