The Novel that Unravels Democracy

2023-04-27

David talks to Ian McEwan about Italo Calvino’s The Watcher (1963), one of the greatest of all works of political fiction. Challenging, disturbing, redemptive: this is a book about who gets to count and who doesn’t, and what identity politics really means. David and Ian also discuss how political fiction works - and why the climate change novel is so hard to write. Plus they argue about whether children should be allowed to vote. Next week: Helen Thompson on Dallas and the end of oil.Ian McEwan’s latest novel is

David talks to Ian McEwan about Italo Calvino’s The Watcher (1963), one of the greatest of all works of political fiction. Challenging, disturbing, redemptive: this is a book about who gets to count and who doesn’t, and what identity politics really means. David and Ian also discuss how political fiction works - and why the climate change novel is so hard to write. Plus they argue about whether children should be allowed to vote.

Next week: Helen Thompson on Dallas and the end of oil.

Ian McEwan’s latest novel is Lessons, available now.

To read more about Calvino, here is a recent appreciation of his later writings in the New Yorker.

On the children’s focus groups, here is the report.

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