Ian McEwan's What We Can Know + new work from Olga Tokarczuk and Miranda Darling episode artwork

EPISODE · Sep 18, 2025 · 54 MIN

Ian McEwan's What We Can Know + new work from Olga Tokarczuk and Miranda Darling

from The Bookshelf · host Australian Broadcasting Corporation

We get stuck into some new fiction, starting with Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know, a meditation on a future shaped by climate disaster and memory. We’re joined by Australian authors Madeleine Gray and Gretchen Shirm to take a look at Miranda Darling’s Fireweather, a poetic story of breakdown and resistance,  and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night, a dreamy blend of folklore and philosophy.BOOKSIan McEwan, What We Can Know, Jonathan CapeMiranda Darling, Fireweather, ScribeOlga Tokarczuk, House of Day, House of Night, (Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), TextGUESTSGretchen Shirm, is a novelist and literary critic whose books include Having Cried Woolf and The Crying Room. Her latest, Out of the Woods, was published in April Madeleine Gray, is a critic, arts writer, and novelist whose debut novel, Green Dot, was published in 2023, and whose latest novel, Chosen Family, will be out in November GRETCHEN SHIRM'S TOP 100 LISTRachel Cusk, Outline trilogySheila Heti, How Should a Person BeVigdis Hjorth, Will and TestamentTara June Winch, Swallow the AirMADELEINE GRAY'S TOP 100 LISTAli Smith, How To Be BothEvelyn Araluen, DropbearJessica Love, Julian is a MermaidOTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDEleanor Catton, The RehearsalVirginia Woolf, Mrs DallowayHelen Garner, worksMaggie O'Farrell, Hamnet, The Marriage PortraitErin Hortle, A Catalogue of LoveMichelle Arrow, The Seventies: The personal, the political and the making of modern AustraliaA.S. Byatt, PossessionJames Fenton, worksRichard Holmes, FootstepsRobert Louis Stevenson, worksCREDITSPresenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullaghProducer, Kate Evans and Sarah CorbettSound engineer, Roi Huberman and Tim JenkinsExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown

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