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
Mountaineering, Lizzie Le Blond, sport and science
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
Kingship and ceremony
Sidney Poitier
Sound, conflict and central heating
Lady Antonia Fraser
Queen Charlotte, fashion and music
New Thinking: Fashion, sustainability and Earth Day
Hilma af Klint
Tartan, Kidnapped and Highland writing
Galatea and Shakespeare
Caruso, Elsie Houston, Peter Brathwaite
Land and soil politics
Ginger Rogers
Children of the Waters
Pirates
Revolutionary free speech
Fugitive slaves, Victorian justice
Religion and Science
A family of witches
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