PODCAST · arts
Sherds Podcast
by Sherds Podcast
Sherds Podcast is a journey through the outskirts of literary history. Each episode, we take an in-depth look at a lesser-known literary text and attempt to give it the critical attention it deserves: books that are criminally overlooked, have struggled to reach an anglophone audience, or are just downright odd. Hosted by Sam Pulham and Rob Prouse Sam Pulham
Episodes
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#33 The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera
The House of Hunger was originally published in by Heinemann in 1978. The book is a collection of harrowing, autobiographical short stories in which Marechera’s experiences both in his native Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and as a university student at Oxford, are channeled into a psychedelic cascade…
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#32 Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo was originally published in Spanish in 1955. The book is published by Serpent’s Tail, the translation is by Margaret Sayers Peden and the readings in this episode are by Jakub Blank. The book concerns the journey of a young man to his mother’s native village of Comala,...
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#31 The Child Cephalina: An Interview with Rebecca Lloyd
In this episode, I spoke to the writer, Rebecca Lloyd, about her novel, The Child Cephalina (2019), which is published by Tartarus Press: Rebecca Lloyd’s superb Gothic novel explores friendship, obsession and the uncanny in teeming mid-Victorian London. At its heart is a tale of human…
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#30 Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy
Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy was originally published in Italian in 1989. The translation is by Tim Parks, and the book is published by And Other Stories. The novel concerns the early years in the life of a young student at an exclusive boarding school in the Swiss mountains.…
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#29 Cinnamon Shops by Bruno Schulz
I’m joined by Stefan Głowacki to discuss Cinnamon Shops, a collection of short stories by Bruno Schulz, which was originally published in Polish in 1934. In this episode, we discuss this classic of Polish literature in its most recent translation by Madeline G. Levine, which is published by...
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#28 Dhalgren by Samuel R Delany
Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren was originally published in 1975. Since its publication, Dhalgren has had its fair share of proponents and enemies - it has been called both the best and the worst book ever to come out of the field of science fiction. Over the course of its eight-hundred pages, we...
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#27 The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers
The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers was originally published in Spanish in 1950. The translation was made by Kit Maude and the book is published by The Feminist Press. On her thirtieth birthday, the main character, Rebeca Linke undergoes a violent physical and mental transformation. She leaves her...
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#26 Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler’s Bloochild and Other Stories was originally published in 1995. The book collects seven stories from throughout Butler’s career, and in this episode we focus on the title story, which depicts a social and sexual relationship between humans and a race of alien beings. Later, we...
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#25 The Mainz Psalter by Jean Ray
Jean Ray’s The Mainz Psalter was originally published in 1930. We read the story in Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s anothology, The Weird, and the translation is by Lowell Blair. The story tells the grizzly tale of The Mainz Psalter, a ship en route to Greenland under the ownership of the shadowy…
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#24 One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard
Caradoc Prichard’s One Moonlit Night was originally published in Welsh in 1961. The book is a classic of Welsh literature, which though greatly admired in its native country, is still shamefully neglected in the English-speaking world. Set in a small village in North Wales, One Moonlit Night is…
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#23 Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MIrrlees was originally published in 1926. Lud-in-the-Mist is the capital of the fictional free state of Dorimare, a country which shares a border with Fairyland, just across The Debatable Hills. Centuries ago, under the rule of Duke Aubrey, Fairy things had been part of...
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#22 The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas
The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas was originally published in Nynorsk in 1957, and is available from Peter Owen books and now as a Penguin Modern Classics edition. The translation is by Michael Barnes and Torbjorn Stoverud. The central character of The Birds is Mattis, a mentally disabled man, living…
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#21 Graves: An Interview with Quentin S. Crisp
On this episode of Sherds Podcast, I’m joined by writer, Quentin S. Crisp, to discuss his new novel, Graves (2019), published by Snuggly Books, who give the following description of the book: In Graves, Damien, a male nurse and self-styled ‘thanatophile’, is in love with death in its purer and…
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#20 Hauntings by Vernon Lee
In this episode, I’m joined by Patricia Pulham, Professor of Victorian Literature at The University of Surrey, to discuss Vernon Lee’s collection of supernatural tales, Hauntings (1890). The book collects four of Vernon Lee’s ghost stories, ‘Amour Dure’, ‘Dionea’, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, and ‘A Wicked...
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#19 Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D. O. Fagunwa
D. O. Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons was first published in 1938; it marks the first full-length novel published in Yoruba and has become a classic work of African literature. The delightfully rich translation is by the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka and is published by City Lights Books.…
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#18 The Witches of Kyiv by Orest Somov
The Witches of Kyiv and Other Gothic Tales collects a range of stories by Ukrainian Romantic author, Orest Somov which were originally published between 1827 and 1833. This collection comes from Sova Books and the translations are by Svitlana Yakovenko. The book also features a helpful glossary…
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#17 The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall was originally published in German in 1963. Our protagonist and narrator is a woman in her 40s. While visiting friends at a hunting lodge in rural Austria, she finds herself divorced from all human contact when an invisible wall descends, cutting her small region off...
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#16 The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen
One contemporary reviewer referred to The Hill of Dreams as the “study, rather than the story, of a morbid temperament.” Often regarded as Machen’s masterpiece, this beautiful and idiosyncratic novel concerns the short life of a young writer, Lucian Taylor, and follows his journey from the Welsh...
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#15 Beirut Nightmares by Ghada Samman
Ghada Samman’s ‘Beirut Nightmares’ was originally published in Arabic in 1976. Set at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, this autobiographical novel concerns two weeks in the life of a journalist and writer living at the heart of the warzone. With the conflict raging outside, and snipers on...
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#14 The Human Chair by Edogawa Rampo
Edogawa Rampo’s short story, ‘The Human Chair’,was originally published in Japanese in 1925. The story is taken from the collection, Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by James B. Harris, and published by Tuttle Publishing. ‘The Human Chair’ is a tale of the grotesque in which…
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#13 The Dying Peasant by Karel van de Woestijne
Karel van de Woestijne’s novella, ‘The Dying Peasant’, was originally published in Dutch in 1918. It is now available for the first time in an unabridged translation by Paul Vincent, published by Snuggly Books. The book concerns an elderly farmer, Nand, who lies on his deathbed and is visited by...
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#12 Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker was originally published in 1980. The novel is set in Kent some two or three thousand years after a nuclear holocaust which has destroyed the land, plunging society back to iron-age levels of technology. Its foundational myth, the Eusa story, grown out of the...
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#11 Ice by Anna Kavan
Anna Kavan’s Ice was originally published in 1967 by Peter Owen books. The book is Kavan’s final and best known work, and appeared just one year before her death. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, society is rapidly crumbling as a wall of ice threatens to engulf the entire planet. Our unnamed...
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#10 The Ship by Hans Henny Jahnn
Hans Henny Jahnn was a German organ-builder, playwright and novelist. In this episode, we look at the only novel of his available in English, The Ship (1949), a beguilingly dark, allegorical tale set aboard a wooden ship with blood red sails which embarks upon an unknown mission, carrying an...
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#9 The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough
‘The Wind’ concerns the fate of Letty, a young girl plucked out of a life of ease in Virginia and forced to move to the plains of Sweetwater, Texas at the height of a terrible drought in the 1880s. Letty struggles to acclimatise in this new, hostile environment – its ugly, arid vistas and its…
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#8 Armed With Madness by Mary Butts
In this episode, we discuss Mary Butts's novel of 1928, 'Armed with Madness'. Over the course of the programme, we consider the possible reasons for the descent of Butts' reputation, the mythological and literary underpinnings of the novel, and think about the ways in which her it expands the...
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#7 I Burn Paris by Bruno Jasieński
Jasieński's 'I Burn Paris' upset the French authorities enough to have him expelled from the country on the novel's publication. The story concerns a plague that breaks out in Paris, exposing the worst tendencies of the city's inhabitants. As the death toll rises, groups begin to isolate…
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#6 Et in Arcadia Ego by Tadeusz Różewicz
In this episode, I'm joined by Stefan Glowacki to discuss Tadeusz Rózewicz's long poem, 'Et in Arcadia Ego' (1961). Over the course of the episode, we consider how the poem might be thought of as Rózewicz's idiosyncratic 'Italian Journey', written in response not only to Goethe's text, but as an...
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#5 The Man Whom the Trees Loved by Algernon Blackwood
In this episode, we look at Algernon Blackwood's story, 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved', which was published in his collection 'Pan's Garden' (1912). The story concerns David and Sophia Bittacy, a married couple living on the edge of the New Forest. Under the influence of the bohemian painter,...
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#4 At Twilight They Return by Zyranna Zateli
In this episode, we look at Zyranna Zateli's 'At Twilight They Return' (1993), translated by David Connolly. Set during the final decades of the 19th century, the novel tells the vivid and meandering history of several generations of a single family in northern Greece. As the modern world begins…
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#3 Red Grass by Boris Vian
In this episode, we look at Boris Vian's 'Red Grass' (1950), a surrealist science fiction novel in which the main character, Wolf, creates a machine that allows him to erase his own memories. Over the course of our discussion, we consider Vian's playful complexity, his parodies of…
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#2 The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
In this episode, we discuss Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain (1977), a work of topographical and philosophical speculation centred on the Cairngorms in Scotland
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#1 Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser
In this episode, we discuss Ronald Fraser's 'Flower Phantoms' (1926), an obscure fantasy in which Judy, a student of botanical sciences, engages in a psycho-sexual communion with the soul of an orchid in Kew Gardens. We were beguiled by this strange, orchidaceous novella. Over the course of the...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Sherds Podcast is a journey through the outskirts of literary history. Each episode, we take an in-depth look at a lesser-known literary text and attempt to give it the critical attention it deserves: books that are criminally overlooked, have struggled to reach an anglophone audience, or are just downright odd. Hosted by Sam Pulham and Rob Prouse Sam Pulham
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Sherds Podcast
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Sherds Podcast currently has 33 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Sherds Podcast about?
Sherds Podcast is a journey through the outskirts of literary history. Each episode, we take an in-depth look at a lesser-known literary text and attempt to give it the critical attention it deserves: books that are criminally overlooked, have struggled to reach an anglophone audience, or are just...
How often does Sherds Podcast release new episodes?
Sherds Podcast has 33 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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