037 Helen Oyeyemi: The Surreal City

In this episode, we speak to novelist and short story writer Helen Oyeyemi about her most recent novel, Parasol Against the Axe. We discuss the use of non-linearity when attempting to write about a complex city like Prague. We chat about the city as a dissociative state, and the relationship to surrealism and conflicting histories. We speak about the intimate relationship between reading, writing and desire, and the way that books can reveal details about the reader, as well as the author. We explore the book as a living object which shifts across time and space, and the use of play and perplexity across Oyeyemi's work. We discuss what it means to resist master narratives and embrace slippery, shapeshifting narrators, subverting the reader's expectations. We examine a hunger for novels which require the reader to work, and what it means to be actively involved in the process of meaning-making.

Helen Oyeyeymi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won a Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread, What Is Not Yours Is Yours, and Peaces, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best Young British Novelists.

References

Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyeymi

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyeymi

Mr Fox by Helen Oyeyeymi

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyeymi

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde

Prague Tales by Jan Neruda