London Review Bookshop Podcast
Arts:Books
William Gardner Smith’s roman à clef about racism, identity, and bohemian living against the backdrop of violence of Algerian War-era France, has been out of print for decades, but as one reviewer put it, ‘the issues Smith raises … resonate at least as much now as they did six decades ago.’ The story of a Black writer who, like Smith himself, moved to Paris to pursue a freedom he couldn’t find in America, its account of his disillusionment and dawning consciousness of Algeria’s struggle for independence includes one of the earliest published accounts of the Paris Massacre of 1961.
Adam Shatz, who wrote the introduction for NYRB’s new edition, discussed The Stone Face’s achievement and contemporary resonances with Paul Gilroy, Professor of the Humanities at UCL and the Holberg Prize-winning author of There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, The Black Atlantic and Darker Than Blue.
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Jason Okundaye & Mendez: Revolutionary Acts
Aniefiok Ekpoudom & Gary Younge: Where We Come From
Laleh Khalili & James Butler: The Corporeal Life of Seafaring
Fleur Adcock: Collected Poems
Holly Pester & Nathalie Olah: The Lodgers
Rachael Allen & Lucy Mercer: God Complex
Lara Pawson & Jennifer Hodgson: Spent Light
Paul Muldoon: Howdie-Skelp
Adam Phillips & Hermione Lee: On Giving Up
Lavinia Greenlaw & Jennifer Higgie: The Vast Extent
Seán Hewitt & Sarah Perry: Rapture’s Road
Emily Wilson, Edith Hall, Juliet Stevenson & Tobias Menzies: The Iliad
Mary Jean Chan & Andrew McMillan: Bright Fear
Ella Risbridger & Kate Young: The Dinner Table
Ed Atkins & Steven Zultanski: Sorcerer
Lynne Segal & Amelia Horgan: Lean on Me
Tom Stevenson & Tariq Ali: Someone Else's Empire
Mathias Enard & Chris Power: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild
McKenzie Wark & Lauren John Joseph: Love and Money, Sex and Death
Isabel Waidner and Diarmuid Hester: Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
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