The Palace of Dreams is a novel from 1981 that is ostensibly set in the 19th century Ottoman empire, but the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare cleverly smuggles in thinly veiled criticism of the totalitarian state presided over by Enver Hoxha. The book was duly banned shortly after publication. Matthew Sweet looks at this and other examples of fiction that satirise bureaucratic overreach from Dickens to Kafka to Georgi Gospodinov, the Bulgarian novelist who won the 2023 International Booker prize for his novel Time Shelter. Sharing their thoughts on these books and on the history and role of bureaucracy within both democratic and totalitarian states are Lea Ypi, Mirela Ivanova and Roger Luckhurst.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Lea Ypi is a Professor at the London School of Economics and the author of Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. You can hear her discussing the culture of Albania in a previous Free Thinking episode Professor Roger Luckhurst's books include Gothic: an illustrated history; Corridors - passages of modernity; Science Fiction: a Literary History Mirela Ivanova teaches at the University of Sheffield. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion of Slavic Myths
Gut instinct
Diva
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Life, art and drama in the kitchen
Glenda Jackson and Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday
Portraits
Ideas about health
Adam Smith
Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes
Michel Piccoli
Nature Memoirs
Europe
The Troubles in Northern Ireland
Sneezing, smells and noses
Linda Grant and Jewish history
Mermaids, Caribbean tales and copyright
Essex
Rocky Horror and camp
Zimbabwean writing
Agoraphobia
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Global News Podcast
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins