PODCAST · arts
The Shakespeare and Company Interview
by Shakespeare and Company
Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast. Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production. Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles. Discover all our upcoming events here. If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here. Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett,
Episodes
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Editions - Episode 2 - Illusions with Megan Nolan
In the second episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist Megan Nolan to discuss Illusions by Ruth Rehmann, in a new translation by Rob Madole, the latest title in the Faber...
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Paris, Deconstructed: Amit Chaudhuri’s Château Rouge
Amit Chaudhuri joins Adam Biles to discuss his new novel Chateau Rouge, set not in the postcard Paris of Hemingway and Midnight in Paris, but in the neighbourhood around Gare du Nord — a Paris that resists being known, curated, or confirmed. Chaudhuri talks about writing against the "already…
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The End of Everything, with M. John Harrison
M. John Harrison returns to the Shakespeare and Company Podcast to talk with Adam Biles about his new novel, The End of Everything, a disaster story set in a "wrong UK" where societal collapse coincides with the arrival of an alien presence, and the strange shape-shifting "artefacts" it leaves...
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Alain Delon, Murder and Paris ’68, with Edward Chisholm
Edward Chisholm joins Adam Biles to discuss Murder in Paris '68, his deep-dive into the Markovic Affair, one of the most explosive scandals of postwar France. In October 1968, the dismembered body of Stevan Markovic, a Yugoslav immigrant and bodyguard to Alain Delon, was found on the outskirts of...
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BLOOMCAST: 🎬Ulysses Movie Watch-along Special🎬
Recorded for Bloomsday 2026. If you're in Paris and it's still June 16th, join us between 2pm and 5pm at Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, Paris. Find the film here: https://vimeo.com/408613317 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7xAM_eXuuk Adam Biles and Lex Paulson reunite after an...
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Fear Less: Tracy K. Smith on Poetry in Perilous Times
Tracy K. Smith comes to Shakespeare and Company for a conversation with Adam Biles. They discuss her book Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times, a bold manifesto on poetry as a tool for deeper living, clearer thinking, and more compassionate citizenship. Drawing on her time as US Poet Laureate…
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Editions - Episode 1 - Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes with Taìno Mendez
In the debut episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist and performer Taìno Mendez to discuss Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke, the twentieth title in the…
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Lea Ypi: Dignity, Fiction, and the Lives History Erases
Philosopher and author Lea Ypi joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company Paris to discuss her latest book Indignity: A Life Reimagined, an extraordinary work blending biography, history, and fiction. When a photo of her grandparents' 1941 honeymoon went viral in Albania, sparking online abuse,...
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Shelter and Storm: Arundhati Roy on Writing Her Mother
An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-arundhati-roy Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Paris, Adam Biles sits down with Arundhati Roy to…
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Ben Lerner on Transcription
Recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, Adam Biles speaks with Ben Lerner about his novel Transcription, a formally inventive meditation on technology, memory, and human connection. Beginning with the novel’s deceptively simple premise (a writer loses his recording device and reconstructs an...
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Why Translate Homer Again? Daniel Mendelsohn on his new Odyssey
Why Translate Homer Again? Daniel Mendelsohn on his new Odyssey This conversation explore’s Daniel Mendelsohn’s new translation of The Odyssey. Mendelsohn reflects on why this endlessly retranslated text still invites fresh interpretation, describing Odysseus as a “proto-author” whose…
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Rare Book Collecting with Ben Brown
In this special edition, we revisit three conversations with Shakespeare and Company rare book dealer Ben Brown, originally recorded in 2022. Across these episodes, Ben guides us into the fascinating, often mysterious world of book collecting. We begin with the basics: what makes a first edition...
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Going South: Tash Aw on Inheritance, Identity, and Escape
This week Adam Biles speaks with Tash Aw about The South, his novel of inheritance, identity, and quiet upheaval. Set on a decaying farm in southern Malaysia, the story follows a family confronting generational fracture, class tension, and the uneasy weight of belonging. Aw explores how landscape...
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Booker Prize Winner David Szalay on Agency, Violence, and Restraint
An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-david-szalay This week Adam Biles sits down with Booker Prize–winner David Szalay to discuss his novel Flesh —…
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Murder, Mannerism and the Medicis with Laurent Binet
Recorded live in the bookshop, this conversation dives into the inventive world of Perspectives, Laurent Binet’s historical novel that transforms Renaissance Florence into the scene of a gripping whodunnit. The discussion explores how a real painter’s death becomes the catalyst for a dazzling...
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George Saunders: Fiction, Free Will, and the Question of Redemption
George Saunders returns to the Shakespeare and Company Podcast to talk with host Adam Biles about Vigil, his long-awaited new novel. Set on the threshold between life and death, Vigil follows a dying oil executive and the ghost tasked with comforting him, unfolding as a darkly comic, morally…
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Narrative Amid Trauma: Emily LaBarge in conversation
In this wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful conversation, writer Emily LaBarge speaks with host Adam Biles about Dog Days, her groundbreaking new work of nonfiction. Rooted in the 2009 hostage event she and her family survived while on holiday in the Caribbean, the book explores not the incident...
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See It, Say It, Sorted: Jonathan Coe’s Genre-Bending Novel
In this episode, Adam Biles welcomes Jonathan Coe to Shakespeare and Company in Paris for a rich, funny, and wide-ranging conversation about Coe’s genre-bending novel The Proof of My Innocence. What begins as a playful pastiche of a cozy crime mystery evolves into three interlocking novellas—a...
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Books Matter More Than Ever: A Conversation with Ian Patterson
In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with poet, translator and critic Ian Patterson about Books: A Manifesto, his passionate defence of reading in all its forms. What begins with the construction of a personal library in a converted coach house opens into a...
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John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, with Ian Leslie
In this live conversation at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, Adam Biles speaks with writer Ian Leslie about John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs, Leslie’s acclaimed exploration of the creative and emotional bond at the heart of The Beatles. Together they trace John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s...
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When Stories Fall Apart: Miriam Robinson on Love, Loss, and Truth
In this intimate conversation recorded at Shakespeare and Company, novelist Miriam Robinson joins Adam Biles to discuss her remarkable debut, And Notre Dame Is Burning. Together, they explore the novel’s fractured structure and the emotional aftermath of betrayal, loss, and motherhood. Robinson...
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Why We Write, Why We Live, with Miriam Toews
An edited version of this conversation is now available as part of our collaboration with The Yale Review. Read it here: https://yalereview.org/article/shakespeare-and-company-interview-miriam-toews Trigger warning: This is a tender, funny, and hopeful conversation, that inevitably touches on the...
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How France Lost Its Way, with Andrew Hussey
In this episode recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, historian and cultural critic Andrew Hussey joins Adam Biles to discuss his powerful new book, Fractured France: A Journey Through a Divided Nation. With wit, erudition, and decades of on-the-ground insight, Hussey examines how France—once...
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Philippe Sands: Pinochet, Walter Rauff, and the Shadows of History
This week Adam Biles speaks with international lawyer and acclaimed author Philippe Sands about his latest book, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia. Building on East West Street and The Ratline, Sands traces the remarkable and disturbing links between Nazi...
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Moonlight Express: Monisha Rajesh on the Magic of Night Trains
In this conversation recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, travel writer Monisha Rajesh talks about her new book Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train. From Paris to Istanbul, Scotland to India, the United States to Lapland, Rajesh explores the romance and realities of sleeper...
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Twenty Writers, One Bookshop: The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews, now in paperback
In this special episode of the Shakespeare and Company Interview Podcast, we celebrate the paperback release of The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews (Canongate), a compelling collection of literary conversations recorded live at our bookshop in Paris. Capturing a decade of rich…
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Small Girl, Big Ideas: Getting to know Mafalda, with Samanta Schweblin and Frank Wynne
In this episode Adam speaks with translator Frank Wynne and Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin about the first-ever English edition of Mafalda, the beloved Argentine comic strip by Quino (Archipelago Books). Together, they explore how this precocious, principled six-year-old girl—who challenged...
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Calls May Be Recorded: Lipstick, Loneliness, and Late Capitalism with Katharina Volckmer
Katharina Volckmer joins Adam Biles to discuss her biting, bleakly funny second novel, Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes. Set in a London call centre, the book follows Jimmie, a disillusioned former actor trapped in a soul-crushing job, a suffocating home life with his...
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The Shape of Survival: Eimear McBride on Love, Art, and the City
In this textured conversation, author Eimear McBride joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to discuss her latest novel The City Changes Its Face. Set in Camden Town in the 1990s, the book revisits characters from The Lesser Bohemians as they navigate the complexities of love, art, aging,...
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Katie Kitamura on Fiction’s Shifting Realities
Katie Kitamura joins Adam Biles to discuss her remarkable novel Audition. Centred on a middle-aged actress whose settled life is upended by a young man claiming to be her son, Audition blurs the lines between performance, identity, and narrative certainty. Kitamura reflects on the novel’s dual...
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Renton Returns, Sick Boy in Love: Irvine Welsh Reimagines His Antiheroes
In this electric conversation, Irvine Welsh joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to discuss Men in Love, the long-awaited sequel to Trainspotting. Picking up moments after Renton's betrayal, Welsh dives deep into the aftermath—friendship, love, addiction, class, and the cultural hangover…
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Inside the Story Machine: Natasha Brown on Media, Power, and Fiction
In this episode novelist Natasha Brown joins Adam Biles to discuss her daring second book, Universality. The conversation explores the novel’s structural audacity—opening with a fictional long-read article—and its thematic interrogation of class, race, media narratives, and the modern British...
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Making Sense of Gertrude Stein, with Francesca Wade
In this rich conversation, Francesca Wade joins Adam Biles to discuss her biography Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife. Wade explores the complexities of Stein’s life, legacy, and literary innovations, foregrounding Stein’s long-overlooked partner, Alice B. Toklas, as a powerful and persistent force...
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Geoff Dyer’s Homework: Family, Class, and Memory
In this episode, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Geoff Dyer live from Shakespeare and Company about his new memoir, Homework. Dyer reflects on growing up in 1960s Cheltenham, navigating family, class, and the formation of self. With characteristic wit and insight, he paints portraits of…
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Rebecca Solnit: Changing the Story, Changing the World
In this powerful in-store conversation, Rebecca Solnit joins Adam Biles to discuss her new book No Straight Road Takes You There — a rallying call for hope, justice, and the reimagining of our collective future. With wit, clarity, and courage, Solnit explores how stories shape our world — and how...
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The Book That Refuses to End: Catherine Lacey on The Möbius Book
In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup...
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Writing the Unspeakable: Neige Sinno on Abuse, Memory, and Language
Trigger Warning: This episode contains detailed discussions of child sexual abuse, rape, trauma, and the failures of the justice system. In this powerful and deeply affecting conversation, Neige Sinno speaks with Adam Biles about her landmark book Sad Tiger, recently published in English in a...
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On the Edge of the Real: Guadalupe Nettel on The Accidentals
In this rich conversation, Guadalupe Nettel joins Adam Biles at Shakespeare and Company to explore the themes of her short story collection The Accidentals. They delve into the complexities of perception and the uncanny, the deep strangeness embedded in familial relationships, and the porous...
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William Blake, Sea Monsters, and the Ecstasy of Art, with Philip Hoare
In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Interview Podcast, Adam Biles welcomes Philip Hoare to the bookstore for a mesmerizing conversation about Hoare’s latest book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. With characteristic lyricism, Hoare explores the mystic intersections between...
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Overnight: Dan Richards on Sleep, Service, and the Secrets of the Small Hours
In this episode, Adam Biles is joined by writer Dan Richards to talk about his new book Overnight, a deep dive into the world of the night and the people who live and work while the rest of us sleep. From ferry captains and bakers to ICU nurses, researchers, and racing drivers, Richards explores...
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Bruise, Heal, Repeat: Anna Whitwham on On Boxing, Loss, and the Female Body
In this episode, Adam Biles is joined in the bookshop’s writing studio by Anna Whitwham, author of Soft Tissue Damage, a raw and electrifying memoir of grief, boxing, and womanhood. Following her mother’s death, Whitwham trained and fought competitively as a boxer—an act of both healing and...
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Solvej Balle on Time, Wonder, and Writing the Impossible *International Booker Prize Shortlist*
In this episode recorded live at Shakespeare and Company, celebrated Danish author Solvej Balle returns to the bookshop she once called home to discuss her monumental literary project On the Calculation of Volume. The novel’s protagonist, Tara Selter, finds herself reliving November 18th—again…
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Nobel Prizewinner Abdulrazak Gurnah on Theft, Love, and the Power of Fiction
Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah sits down with Adam Biles in store to discuss his new novel, Theft. Their conversation delves into the intricate interplay between personal history and the enduring legacy of colonialism, examines the complex dynamics of family and servitude, and...
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BONUS: Jeremy Pelt on Preserving Jazz Through Storytelling
For this bonus episode, the Shakespeare and Company podcast welcomes Jeremy Pelt, renowned jazz trumpeter and author of Griot: Examining the Lives of Jazz Great Storytellers. In conversation with Alex Freiman, Pelt discusses the evolution of jazz, the influence of oral traditions, and the...
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Reimagining Moby-Dick, with Xiaolu Guo
In this episode, we’re joined by novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo to discuss her latest novel, Call Me Ishmaelle. A bold reimagining of Moby-Dick, Guo's novel audaciously swaps the gender of Melville’s narrator and plunges into a world of hidden identities, maritime adventure, and cultural...
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2016: The Year That Broke Us - with poet and oral-historian Sarah Hesketh
In this thought-provoking discussion, poet and oral historian Sarah Hesketh discusses her latest book, 2016 (CB Editions), a powerful exploration of one of the most pivotal years in recent history. Through a poetic and documentary approach, she captures the voices of twelve individuals reflecting...
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The Power of Voice – Sulaiman Addonia on The Seers
In this special live recording we dive into The Seers, the mesmerising new novel by Sulaiman Addonia. In conversation with Adam Biles, Addonia shares the story behind his bold, unfiltered novel—written as a single, unbroken paragraph—through the voice of Hannah, an Eritrean refugee navigating…
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Acts of Resistance: Amber Massie-Blomfield on the Power of Art to Shape a Better World
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Amber Massie-Blomfield, author of Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create a Better World. This conversation, recorded in store, dives into the profound role art plays in times of crisis. Amber shares stories of artists who defied oppressive...
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Democracy at Risk: Salomé Saqué on Resisting the Far Right
In this pivotal episode, Adam Biles speaks with French journalist and author Salomé Saqué about her urgent new book, Résister. Recorded two days after the death of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and coinciding with Donald Trump’s second inauguration, this conversation delves into the...
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Bloomcast Holiday Special: Watt by Samuel Beckett, Episode 2
For the second part of this year’s Bloomcast Holiday Special, Alice, Lex, and Adam get help from novelist Claire-Louise Bennett and Philosophy professor Foad Dizadji-Bahmani to explore how it challenges conventional ideas of narrative, language, and meaning. As always, our Bloomcasters invite...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast.
Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production.
Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.
Discover all our upcoming events here.
If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here.
Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Hari Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett,
HOSTED BY
Shakespeare and Company
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Shakespeare and Company Interview have?
The Shakespeare and Company Interview currently has 215 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Shakespeare and Company Interview about?
Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast. Now also the home of Editions: A Shakespeare and Company x Faber Production. Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our...
How often does The Shakespeare and Company Interview release new episodes?
The Shakespeare and Company Interview publishes regularly with 215 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Shakespeare and Company Interview?
You can listen to The Shakespeare and Company Interview on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Shakespeare and Company Interview?
The Shakespeare and Company Interview is created and hosted by Shakespeare and Company.
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