The Penguin Podcast: Episode 1 – Prizewinners

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Transcript of this episode

Rihanna Dhillon:

Hello and welcome to the Penguin Podcast and a brand new series called Ask Penguin, which is your go-to place for all of your book related questions answered by the people who write and publish them. I'm Rhianna Dillon and I'm a culture journalist. As a critic, I review books and films and TV shows, but really it was books that started it all for me and as an adult, there's still an essential part of my life and like you, I just really love reading and that's why I'm so excited to be here in the Penguin studio. As your new podcast host, each episode I'll be taking you inside Penguin books to meet some of the incredible authors published by Penguin as well as lots of people who work here. I'm going to be taking your questions to find out what inspires the stories that we love or are yet to discover and what should be on your to read pile.

And you, our listeners are at the heart of what we do. What would you like to ask Penguin? Do you need to find your next page turning read? Do you want to find out what a day in the life of an editor is like or simply why a small aquatic flightless bird became the iconic emblem that adorns penguin books worldwide? If you have a question that you'd like to ask, then simply email Penguin podcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk or click the link in the show notes to go straight to the podcast page and you might just get the answer to that burning question about all things books. We can't wait to hear from you. Across the series, we'll be covering all sorts of topics and themes, and today we are focusing on prize winning books, answering your requests for reading recommendations with a range of titles that have picked up appraisal or two. So alongside filling up your to read pile, we're getting the inside scoop on this year's Booker prize and I have so many questions.

First up, helping me navigate the world of glittering literary prizes both winning and judging them is book a judge and award-winning penguin author Sarah Collins. Sarah worked as a lawyer for 17 years before making the leap into writing. So while starting for her ma, she was the recipient of the Michael Huro prize of recreated writing her critically acclaimed debut novel. The Confessions of Franny Langton is an incredible gothic romantic thriller. It follows the of Frannie, a young Jamaican woman brought to London in the early 19th century where she's accused of the double murder of her master and mistress and it won the Costa first novel award. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Sara Collins:

Thanks for having me.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So as we're recording, we are on tender hooks for the Booker Prize shortlist announcement. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Sara Collins:

Do not let me reveal anything.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Are you like the Tom Holland's number one

Sara Collins:

I just sort of, usually blurt secrets out before I'm supposed to, so I'm very nervous about not doing that today.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Well, can you tell us about the experience of judging then rather than talking about potential winners? How did it feel to be asked to be a judge this year?

Sara Collins:

It's such a huge honour. I mean, it's like I've said before that the booker is the Olympics of book prizes and I think it's like being a judge at the Olympics. I love reading, I'm a writer because I love reading and it's like the experience of having all of the best books by all of the best writers handpicked for you to just spend a year luxuriating in.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So how does the judging process actually work then for the book? Is it different from other prizes that you've been involved in judging?

Sara Collins:

Yeah, I think the thing that's unique about the book, first of all, it's equality. I mean, everyone is putting their best foot forward. Publishers are limited in the number of submissions they can make and they're really thinking about what's going to represent their imprints or houses best. Also, the fact that all judges read all books. So we had to whittle pile of submissions of 150 books down to a long list of 13 and that was all five judges reading all 150 books. And I think the pressure, the weight of expectation, it really is such a well established prize brand, if I could use that word. You don't want to get it wrong, of course you're going to get it wrong in some people's opinions because it's all subjective. There are a lot of eyes on the Booker Prize and people like to tell you what they think about your choices. So that's all been completely new to me this year.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So 150 books. How long does it take you to read 150 books?

Sara Collins:

We started getting them in January, we met in June, and I think I was reading right up until the night before the deadline, making sure I had given every book fair consideration. I was reading on the StairMaster, I was reading while washing my dishes, definitely reading while falling asleep. My eyes kind of went funny. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it was the most reading I've ever done in a really short space of time. Plus I was doing other reading. I had all the things to read alongside that.

Rihanna Dhillon

How do you read then? Do you skim read ever or are you a quick reader? I'm so fascinated by how people genuinely read.

Sara Collins:

I love that you brought up skimming. It was A. S. Byatt's funeral this week and someone told me that there was a video played where she apparently said that you can't be a good reader without being a good skimmer. I think it is definitely a skill, especially if you've got to read a lot. I was a lawyer in my former life, a barrister, so I was used to kind of getting all the lever arch files together the night before court and kind of absorbing material really quickly. But with the booker, I had this thing where I felt really aware of the risk of missing something if I did skim and you know giving every book a kind of fair chance. And so it meant taking it seriously, really reading every book carefully, beginning to end and making sure that I'd thought about whether it had recommended itself to go onto the next stage or not.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Were there themes that kind of cropped up in this batch or ideas that were perhaps repeated. I wonder if that happens.

Sara Collins:

Yeah, it seems to happen all the time, which isn't surprising. We're all, I mean, writers are people and they're working with what interests them or obsesses them or worries them. And for me this year there was definitely a focus on climate, our relationship to the planet, exploration, but also kind of looking at the earth and in fact in some cases and with one book in particular, the universe, but also setting the scale of our own individual lives against that. So the tiny to the infinite and the ordinary to the extraordinary, and it was really moving. I think the other thing that all of the judges have felt this year is that we were looking for books that would make us really feel, there's one book that I've now read three times, I can't say again, don't let me blurt this out by accident. I've read it three times. Every time I get to the end of that book, in the very last line, I sob, a visceral kind of reaction, I sob. It's like a punch in the gut. I don't know how this author has done it, but it's a book that kind of accumulates this real emotional tug. And so there was a lot of that. There was a lot of heart, a lot of thinking about memory and grief and family and the kinds of things that will make us cry and will move us.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And were you sort of all in vague agreement? Were there any sort of outliers? I mean, how do you fight your corner if you are the only one rooting for a book.

Sara Collins:

You've got to believe in it. If you believe in a book, it is fighting for, I dunno, a child, if you fall in love with a book, you take it to heart. Everyone has had books that they have had that kind of relationship with on the panel. I mean we give each other a fair hearing. We give the books a fair chance. Some hearts have been broken, but we're still friends.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Have you had your mind changed?

Sara Collins:

Yes, I have. I have fallen in love with a book that I've been kind of persuaded to look at again by I was the odd one out on that particular book and I was persuaded to look at it again. It's happened the other way around. I fell in love with a book and was able to advocate for it. I think that is one of the most fun things about being on a judging panel because it's the process of reading. It's one of the bits of magic in reading that it can spark conversations but also change. And that thing that happens outside of the book is almost as special as what's happening in the book itself. But we're still really friendly and I hope that's going to continue. We have a really tough job. I think the books are all exceptional on the longlist, and so it's a really tough job to kind of pick a winner out of those.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So your debut, the Confessions of Franny Langton.

Sara Collins:

Which I see that's the nearest it's come to any kind of booker involvement. So thank you for putting it on this book stack.

Rihanna Dhillon:

You are so welcome. It's also behind you, we have it everywhere. Booker adjacent, so it won the cost of first novel award. So what did that mean for your writing career, winning an award like that?

Sara Collins:

It was huge. I mean, it is transformative

Rihanna Dhillon:

Really.

Sara Collins:

There were a couple of things that really changed the trajectory of the book. I mean it was very well reviewed, but with a book publishers and the author as well, if we're honest about it, you're looking not just for critical, but commercial success and the Waterstones Book of the Month selection and the cost of first novel award were the things that really kind of got the word out to readers about the book and made a huge difference commercially. So I will be forever grateful for that. Plus it was just fun. I love an excuse to get dressed up and go to a cocktail party and be kind of the bell of the ball, I mean, you write a book usually in your pyjamas or some kind of slovenly outfit. There's no glamour in writing a book and it's very lonely. And the prize process brings a sense of achievement and the sort of public applause and the acknowledgement that you're not alone and that this book has connected with someone that's really gratifying for an author. It's one of the things I will forever remember about that whole publication experience with the debut novel.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Did you get any feedback from the people who were in that room judging your book? Did you know why you managed to win them over?

Sara Collins:

Yeah, so I actually know and well have come to know a couple. One, an author who said that essentially she just sort of fell into it on the first page and then didn't surface until the end. And that's what I was going for because there's some heavy themes in my book. It's about a formerly enslaved woman. It is a love story. It's also a murder mystery, but I didn't want it to feel like a history lesson. I really wanted the feeling, I love in reading a book where you can't sleep until how it ends. And so I love the fact that I got that bit of feedback. And I think that's really important because people think prizes are very literary, very high brow, and of course you're looking for exceptional writing and you're looking for something that does something unusual with a novel form. But books have to be readable first and foremost. They have to be accessible. It's about saying something that you want other people to understand and connect with in some way. And so you're not trying to sail it over people's heads. You’re trying to connect heart to heart. That's how I look at it, really get people, as that judge said, to fall into it, to stay in it until they swim out.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And what do you think it is about Frannie herself that connected with people?

Sara Collins:

Frannie's kind of an anti-heroine. I think part of it is that people sort of love to hate her or they love to challenge her. She doesn't always do what you're expecting, which was important to me as a black writer, writing a sort of black female character who was enslaved. You think of that person in a kind of mode of victimhood. And she isn't that. She does some quite selfish problematic things. My sister-in-Law when she first read the book, messaged me about a third of the way through and said, right girl, I have just thrown that book across the room because X, Y, z, Franny, what the hell is she thinking? I think that's what it is. I love a really good problematic woman like a woman who's working through some shit. Right? And how often do you see that? It's almost like a kind of, well, I was going to say it's a modern take, but it's not. It's universal. Even if you're writing about a woman in history, we all kind of have the same internal desires, which might lead to conflicts with ourselves and the outside world, and hers was, here she is super intelligent in a world that didn't accept that a person like her could be and also really super hungry for love and sex and all the stuff that the world said she couldn't have. And I certainly found some magic in writing that kind of clash of all of those things. And I've heard a lot of readers say that that's the magic they found in reading it as well.

Rihanna Dhillon:

When you said that you were obviously reading this enormous amount of work, how much impact did that have on your writing in terms of genre? Did it make you think about other areas that you might not normally have thought to write about.

Sara Collins:

You mean like Booker reading?

Rihanna Dhillon:

Yeah

Sara Collins:

No, although I do wish it has made me really profoundly jealous till I'm sick to my stomach, what that I wish I could write. Some of the stuff that we've had on the long list, especially the kind of that sort of beautiful descriptive passages in some of these books talking about the ocean, like deep ocean or outer space or a small town in Ireland really, truly astonished by the gifts of all of these writers. But no, it hasn't kind of swayed me off. So I started a book about hip hop. It's like a hip hop love story. It hasn't swayed me off that path. That's what I'm writing and I'm sticking to it.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Sara Collins:

I don't want to jinx it, but I will say it's kind of like if you put Jay-Z in the middle of the Great Gatsby

Rihanna Dhillon:

Sort of, which he kind of is in Baz Lurman’s

Sara Collins:

Right? Yeah. His voice is definitely there. It's that these guys who were sort of bigger than Gods in the nineties. I'm really interested in. It's a very female-centric book, although this description make it seem like that. So the observer character in the book is a woman, but it's about her experience with these guys who were making hip hop in the nineties and it was one of the roots to power and wealth for black men in one of the only roots. And it was a kind of empowering thing, but also a corrupting thing. And so I'm really interested in thinking about that a little bit.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And finally, do you ever write with somebody in mind? Do you have either a loved one or a sort of an anonymous person that you sort of think, this could be for you?

Sara Collins:

Realistically, the person who is in mine when I'm writing at the moment is my agent. She's going to love this. Shout out to Nell. She's my first reader. She's a very good reader. I would recommend for aspiring writers listening to this who do not have an agent, that when you're thinking about what kind of agent you're going to go for, if you're lucky enough to have a choice, find someone who's a good reader, who really understands story. I love talking story with Nell, we talk about stuff we watch on television, the latest books we've read. She just can see what I'm trying to write before I can. And so she's kind of a few steps ahead of me. So she's a really good editor. And so probably if there's anyone in mind, it's her. But I think the first person you should write for is yourself, which might sound very egotistical, but, well for me anyway, I come to writing because of reading and so I'm kind of looking, it's that Tony Morrison quote that everyone always butchers and throws around, but the book that you want to read but hasn't been written yet. And so you are kind of writing to fill some sort of space in yourself. And I think if you do that, then you find some electricity in it.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So the book of Prize winner is going to be announced on Tuesday the 12th of November. So you've got lots of time to work your way through the shortlist before then and pick your own favourite. Sara, thank you so much for giving us that brilliant insight into the Booker Prize and the Judging Process

Sara Collins:

And no spoilers! It's been so lovely chatting with you. Thank you. Really, really fun. Thank you.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Coming up, I'll be putting your requests for book recommendations to one of our penguin experts. But before that, in the time since I spoke to Zara, the Booker price shortlist has been revealed. So to find out more about the Penguin books that have been shortlisted, I track down some of the people who are working on them. And I'm first of all joined in the studio by Toye Oladini. Thank you so much for joining us.

Toye Oladini:

Thanks so much for having me. It's lovely to be here.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So first of all, tell us what your job is.

Toye Oladini:

So I'm editorial assistant at Viking and General

Rihanna Dhillon:

And Viking is what exactly? And what does it specialise in?

Toye Oladini:

So Viking is our imprint. So we do fiction and nonfiction, and I specialise in literary fiction. So we work with those like Caleb Azumah, Nelson, and Elif Shafak, and obviously, Yael van der Wouden.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So congratulations because The Safe Keep has just been shortlisted for the Booker, which must be an incredibly exciting time for you guys there.

Toye Oladini:

Oh yeah. We're so excited about it, especially as it's her debut book, the only debut on the shortlist as well.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So that's quite a rare thing.

Toye Oladini:

Yeah. Well there was one on last year, but it's quite rare for an author, I mean, to write a debut book and have it reach this level of high success.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And so can you tell us a bit about The Safe Keep? It's such an inviting book jacket. First of all, I keep seeing it and my arm goes reach for it. It looks very readable.

Toye Oladini:

Oh, amazing. We worked really hard on the cover. We just wanted to get that feeling of mystery and suspense. So it set in the Netherlands 15 years after World War II has ended and it cntres Isabelle, who's the only one of her two other siblings to have stayed in the family house. I mean, she just feels an immense duty to maintain it. She's very strict, very disciplined with herself. And at dinner with one of her brothers, Louis, he brings this mysterious woman, his new girlfriend to come and stay at the house for a season. And Ava's the complete opposite to Isabelle, she's very freewheeling. She basically just throws the house into disarray. She's moving things around and then cutlery starts to go missing, crockery, and Isabelle just can't take it. She's so repressed. And just over the course of the next few weeks, she just reaches Boiling Point and I'll stop there because yeah.

Rihanna Dhillon:

I want to know more. So tell us a bit about the author then Yael. So it is her debut, but why do you think that her debut has ended up on the shortlist?

Toye Oladini:

Well, she does teach writing in the Netherlands, so she's very, very experienced. She's been writing for a very long time and she's just so meticulous with everything that she does. She took great care in plotting the book, and yes, she's a craftsman like author.

Rihanna Dhillon:

What do you hope even just being on the shortlist will do for Yael's career?

Toye Oladini:

When we started with the book, we had very high hopes. She had a lot of internal enthusiasm for it as well, and we really think that she's an author that can stick around and be like a mainstay as a literary author. So definitely it's gotten her on the map now. A lot of people who are reading the shortlist every year are going to read it, and I just know that once they see the book, they'll just fall in love with it. It's just so well written and the characters just grab you straight away.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Oh, I have everything crossed for you. Thank you so much, Toye.

Toye Oladini:

Thank you.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Hello, Hannah Wesland, thank you so much for joining us.

Hannah:

Thank you for having me.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So tell us a bit before we get into it, what your job is.

Hannah:

Sure. So I am the publishing director of Jonathan Cape, which is an imprint of vintage books, which is part of PRH.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So what does that imprint specialise in?

Hannah Wesland:

So we actually publish a very broad range of books on Cape. We publish fiction, nonfiction, poetry and graphic novels, but we are very well known for publishing literary fiction of the highest order and have been doing that well. The imprint is over a hundred years old. So we've been doing it for a very long time.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And I hear congratulations are in order because you have not one but two titles that are on the book a shortlist this year.

Hannah:

That's right. We're absolutely thrilled to have two books on the shortlist. We in fact had four books on the long list

Rihanna Dhillon:

Oh, brilliant.

Hannah Wesland:

I will add, because we're incredibly proud of those books to Sarah Perry's Enlightenment and Colin Barrett's Wild Houses. We're on the long list and now we have Samantha Harvey's Orbital and Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake on the short list. So it's a really exciting week for us.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So tell us first then about Orbital. Tell us a bit about the plot if you can, and a bit about the author as well.

Hannah Wesland:

So Orbital is a short, exquisite novel about a group of astronauts who are orbiting the earth in a spaceship and conducting a mission doing that. And it's a book that follows them orbiting the earth several times over a period of time. And it details with absolute extraordinary clarity and beauty, what it feels like to look down on the earth and see this planet that we live on from far away. And in doing so, sort of allows you to step back and think about the earth and what living on it means. It's also a book that's full of life and humanity because these people are on earth spaceship together and having to live as a group and all of the rest of it. So it's a very, very special book. Oh, beautiful.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And Creation Lake.

Hannah Wesland:

Yes. Creation Lake is, well, it's been described as many different things, but it's often described as a spy novel, wrapped in a novel of ideas. And that's sort of accurate in the sense that it is a novel about an undercover agent called Sadie Smith, who's an American sent to rural France, to infiltrate a group of radical climate activists who are trying to disrupt large scale industrial agribusiness in a very remote corner of southwest France. So it is an incredibly enjoyable page turning thriller, which follows this agent, but it's much, much, much more complex than that. It's a novel about the leader of this cult that the spy is trying to infiltrate who is obsessed with Neanderthals and the philosophy around them. And so you get a kind of really interesting meshing of philosophical ideas and deep prehistory with a wise cracking, hilarious, very unreliable narrator who kind of takes you to places that are really surprising,

Rihanna Dhillon:

Incredibly different, very different books as well, it sounds like in their style and narrative structure. Sounds very exciting. Good luck.

Hannah:

Thank you

Rihanna Dhillon:

One of the best bits of my job on the Penguin podcast is that I get to meet some of the brilliant people who work across Penguin and pick their brains for answers to your ask pen penguin questions. So today I am delighted to be joined by Simon Prosser, who is the publishing director of Hamish Hamilton and editor of so many Prizewinning writers names like Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evero, Ali Smith, Arundhati Roy, Pat Barker, Robert McFarland, Hanif Kureishi, you've heard of them. Simon, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This is going to be good. I can tell. Can you just first of all explain a little bit about what Hamish Hamilton does as an imprint within Penguin?

Simon Prosser:

Sure. So Hamish Hamilton's very much a, it's kind of boutique list, I guess you could say. I don't love the word boutique, but it sort of sums it up. So it's not a department store, it's pretty selective. We publish maybe 20 new titles here, maximum, sometimes a little less than that. We work with many ongoing authors, but we still try and take on a couple of new writers, a few new writers every year if we can find the right writers. And we're very much a literary list. By that I mean that on the fiction side, I'm especially interested in writing that is potentially prize winning is one thing. Secondly, writing that's original that in a way relates to the whole history of literature. So people who are interested in taking their place and in a kind of canon, if you like, and changing that canon and doing something new with it.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Just sitting here earlier and I picked up a copy of Zadie Smith's White Teeth and in her dedication, she thanks you. So that was really interesting in terms of how you might work as an editor with a debut author, because presumably you have to show them absolutely everything, you have to guide them through so much versus somebody who is really established has been doing this for a long time. So can you tell us about how you sort of differentiate between how you work with those two sorts of people?

Simon Prosser:

Yeah, absolutely. A big part of my job is being a kind of ideal reader. By that I mean understanding as fully as you can, what a writer intends, what they want, what they're trying to do, understanding what the tools are that are innate to them that allow them to do it, and then helping them, encouraging them to take risks when necessary or to pull back or to understand perhaps when something is dragging a little or to repetitive a little, and then finding very diplomatic ways to do that. The other part of being an ideal reader is to prepare people. If there is something that you think, well, that's where a reviewer is going to get in and they're going to you know. Well these days, not just reviewer, it could be social media, it could be an absolutely unknown Behemoth, it's going to get in and have a view and you may want that or you may want to avoid that. It's up to you. But all those kind of conversations I think. But just being the most sympathetic reader possible, but also being tough enough I guess, to help people do their best.

Rihanna Dhillon:

And then if somebody has been writing for years and years and years and has published many books, does that change your role at all or do you still see it as the same? You're still the ideal reader?

Simon Prosser:

It does change a bit. And I think what happens is the second book is always written. It's not written in anonymity, it's written in more of a public space. And what that public space does is quite interesting. So a writer will have been out and let's say been at bookshop events, taking questions. They'll get a sense of what it is that readers are responding to and reviewers are responding to, and they will have a choice then really is do they take that on board? Do they start writing towards that or do they write away from that or do they want to surprise the reader? And those are really interesting conversations to have, actually. I think the most important thing I can do is to just be there at every point and encourage and to support and to, particularly when it comes to somebody saying, I want to take a risk. I want to try something different. In my kind of reasonably long experience, sometimes even often that can produce really exciting work and also really commercial work work. That change, that stepping up can take a writer to a different place.

Rihanna Dhillon:

One of slightly less deep question is how, obviously if you have a prize winning book, so quickly, these new covers come out and they have these little gold sort of embossed stickers on them. How do you reprint those so quickly after a book is one prize?

Simon Prosser:

It's all very carefully set up and choreographed. So the tragic thing is that let's say there are six books on a shortlist. Probably every publisher has done that for every one of those six books. Yeah. So they will have designed the reprint cover, they will have booked him with the print of the space, they would've made sure the paper's there, they will have the cover files ready and they'll have a plan. They'll have a plan with the retailers. So what usually happens is every time there's a big, big prize, let's say the booker and somebody at the event will be tasked with calling the production director, even if it's 11 o'clock at night, it usually is. And saying, press go.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Sounds more depressing if you're saying don't go, it's off. So our listeners have been sending in some questions to Ask Penguin, and we were hoping that you might be able to help us with a few recommendations. Feel like you're very well placed for this. One catch is that they have to be prize winning, or at least in your opinion, prize worthy. So our first Ask Penguin request is, I'd love something emotional and poignant with a love story. Typically historical fiction with lush prose and the type of sentences that make you stop, gasp and wish you'd written it first. What can you suggest

Simon Prosser:

Has to be Arundhati Roy. The God of Small Things has to be. And it won a prize. It won the big prize, it won the Booker. It was her debut and it won it. I do publish her, but I didn't publish that book, but I heard about her along with everyone else with that book. I thought it does all of those things. I mean, it is a love story, but it's not just a love story. And the love story is only a part of it. But

Rihanna Dhillon:

Can you tell us a bit about the book?

Simon Prosser:

Yeah. I mean it's set in Kerala, the landscape there, the place, sense of place is extraordinarily, wonderfully described. I think the word lush came up, but you could not get more lush, really. It is very lush. Every sentence is a pure pleasure. It's immediately captivating. It's extremely funny in the sense of its sort of Joie de vivre, but it also addresses really serious subjects, not least cast in India. Love across the love lines, I guess. And politics is in there, everything, is in love, life, death. It's a remarkable book. It's wonderful. I recently reread it. It still stands up. Highly recommend it.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much. And of course, the Confessions of Frannie Langton would also be a great fit for that one.

Simon Prosser:

Indeed, indeed. Yeah. Arundhati was the first that came to mind, but absolutely.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Okay, so our next request for Ask Penguin, any captivating dystopian novels similar to George Orwell’s 1984?

Simon Prosser:

That's a really tough one, I think. I mean, 1984 is so distinct. There are many, many, many dystopian novels. As to whether I call them exactly captivating. I don't know they capture you, but I do have one suggestion. It's a book that's actually out this month and it's by Ali Smith. And it's called Gliff, G-L-I-F-F, which is this old Scots word for glimpse, a sudden glimpse. And it's a book set in a time very close to now in the future in which a kind of dystopia has happened. But I think what's completely captivating about her book as people will find out when they read it, is that she's less interested in the mechanics of the dystopia and much more interested in what it is that we'll need as human beings to survive it. What kind of spirit we'll need, what kind of an attitude to life and to language and to everything else we need. So there's a kind of complete and surprising joy, a kind of revolutionary joy in the book. It is captivating and it's captivating because it shows us what we're going to need to be as people in order to get through this time that quite possibly lies ahead of us. And it's a time in which very simply, people who the state aren't people they want in their state become unverified. And once you are unverified, that's it. You have no right, you have nothing. But as I say, the mechanics of how that happens are less interesting to her. Maybe a bit like Orwell actually. Orwell is very interested in the spirit we will need, I guess.

Rihanna Dhillon:

So finally, someone after what I think might be the complete opposite of what we've just been talking about, asking about literary fiction, but not too depressing, an injection of joy and a celebration of life

Simon Prosser:

Has to be Bernardine Evaristo. It's there in every line. It's an absolute relish, I think, in capturing character, in taking those characters into story, in making those stories connect with us in language that wonderfully runs the gamut to registers between sort of street hip hop poetry, right the way through to more formal kinds of language. Someone who has a background in theatre, she's absolutely brilliant at Voice. Most famously perhaps in Girl, Woman, Other which won won the Booker Prize, thank the Lord, deservedly. Absolutely wonderful book. I would defy anyone to read it and not find some pleasure in not just life, but actually people. It teaches us that you have to look, you just have to look a little bit at people and actually get inside them a little bit and listen to them and have empathy. And if you do that, then it's like water's been splashed on some dusty mosaic floor and suddenly it all comes to life. She has that quality. I also highly recommend Mr. Loverman an absolutely wonderful novel that is coming to tv.

Rihanna Dhillon:

It is

Simon Prosser:

Very soon.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Yes, it is.

Simon Prosser:

The screenings are happening right now and it looks brilliant.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Does look very joyful, Mr. Loverman.

Simon Prosser:

Indeed.

Rihanna Dhillon:

What was it like being in the room when Bernadine Ito won the Booker Prize?

Simon Prosser:

It was, without any doubt, one of the best moments of my life.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Really? That's so lovely.

Simon Prosser:

Yeah. I love Bernie and I worked with her for over 20 years. I thought from the first moment I heard her speak, which was in a club, actually. I heard her before I knew she was a writer. She was just doing a reading at a place called the Coton Club in West London way back in the day. And I thought, who is this person? What is this for?

Rihanna Dhillon

Amazing.

Simon Prosser:

She was doing a poetry reading, performing a poem, and I went up to her afterwards and talked to her, and I said, would you be interested in writing a novel? And she said, yeah, yeah, I'm writing a novel. And sent me what became The Emperor's Babe, a novel in verse. And so we've worked together since then. I thought The Emperor's Babe might be at least booker shortlisted, and it just took such a long time coming and I think I understand some of the reasons why. But then it did. It happened. She wrote this book and it was clear if she was ever going to, this was the one. It's got to do it. So I remember saying to colleagues, this is really the one. This is definitely going to happen, but you can never know till it does, because it's just five or six subjectivities in a room deciding. And they decided, but you would not believe the cheer that went up when she won.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Oh, really?

Simon Prosser:

It was amazing. You don't usually get that. But she, over those 20 years, had mentored, helped being generous to so many people, so many other writers, younger writers, through teaching at Brunell, through many kindnesses. And publishers in the room, and agents in the room. They knew that. So she was such a popular winner. It was so deserved. It was the best really was. She deserves it. Completely.

Rihanna Dhillon:

What can that do for them when they already have such an established career?

Simon Prosser:

It was incredible what it's done for her. I mean, what it can do is can take you from having several thousand readers to having several hundred thousand readers plus and having several foreign rights deals to having 40, 50 plus foreign rights deals. So it does that. It means you get invited all around the world. You go to conferences, festivals, it's amazing. And of course, book launches for your books in multiple countries. But what Bernie did, which is an amazing thing, really literally on day one, we got together and she said, what can I want to use this platform? And she did straight away. She used every interview to amplify things that she cared about politically, particularly in terms of diversity, inclusion, representation, xenophobia, just all of that straight up there. And it was amazing to see her do that. I knew she would, and she did it brilliantly. And also the other thing about that is when it comes after a career, she was ready for it. It wasn't like some 25-year-old winning it and really going, it's too much. It really wasn't. It was just right.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Perfect.

Simon Prosser:

It was such a happy story.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much, Simon, for joining us. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Simon Prosser:

I've enjoyed it. Thank you.

Rihanna Dhillon:

Thank you so much to everybody who's already submitted a question. I've really loved reading everybody's requests. You can find episode transcripts and details for all of the books we've mentioned at www.penguin.co.uk/podcasts. And if you've got a question or just a message for us, you can email penguinpodcast@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. There's a link in the show notes to make it really easy for you to get in touch. And we are really excited to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you again to our amazing guests. We'll be back next time where we'll be joined by author and presenter, Zeinab Badawi. But in the meantime, why not follow The Penguin Podcast and make sure that you don't miss any future episodes or if you're in a writing mood, why don't you leave us a little comment or a review? We'd love that. We'll see you very soon. And in the meantime, happy reading.