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Published by Granta earlier this autumn, Ben Pester’s debut novel is the story of Tom Crowley - a Willy Loman figure for our age - who is slowly and terrifyingly absorbed into the hallucinatory and labyrinthine surroundings of his work. From the deceptive nature of Luke Bird’s day-glow cover art to the impenetrability of the novel’s work-speak The Expansion Project is deeply unnerving precisely for its recognisable qualities. The alienation, accountability and obsolesce of corporation life at the ever growing 'Capmeadow Business Park,’ a dystopic setting that absorbs memory and demands disassociation.

‘A profoundly moving, extraordinary novel … Witty, touching, layered and entirely original’

Rose Ruane

‘A surrealist nightmare that flows with its own logic, humour, politics and plot energy’

Ross Raisin

‘This is a luminous and startling novel from a unique new voice.’

Samuel Fisher

GET YOUR COPY HERE

https://granta.com/products/the-expansion-project/

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Next February, Canongate will publish Nation of Strangers, the third instalment in a series by Turkish novelist, essayist and journalist Ece Temelkuran. Ahead of its publication we met to discuss the two books that precede it, ‘How To Lose A Country’ and ‘Together - A Manifesto Against A Heartless World.’ Both deal with what Ece has termed ‘cloud fascism’ - the gradual then sudden everywhereness and nowhereness of global autocracy.

Rooted in her own experience of the Erdogan regime’s corruption and unrelenting assault on human rights, both books detail the dark drift toward fascism and the determination and dignity needed in resistance. In this wide ranging conversation, the first of two interviews, we discuss the normalisation of shamelessness, the dangers of pseudo-understanding, the fight for institutions and the essential value of stories, something Ece describes as ‘natural penicillin for diseases of the soul. ‘

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist, political thinker and public speaker whose work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, La Stampa, El Pais, New Statesman and Der Spiegel. Her novels have been published in several languages and adapted for the stage.

‘One of the most acute and perceptive analysts of the furtive growth of fascism. Everyone should know about this.’

PHILIP PULLMAN

‘This is essential.’

MARGARET ATWOOD

‘Temelkuran is a brilliant writer, finding humour, hope and humanity in the darkest corners of our current malaise. Together lifted my heart and my spirits.’

BRIAN ENO

‘A potent mix of fierce urgency but unyielding calmness.’

THE IRISH TIMES

Music used on this episode is Room 2 by 36

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On this episode we meet Clare Carlisle to discuss Transcendence for Beginners, (Fitzcarraldo Editions). A book written through love and mourning, it is, as the title suggests, explorative, unbound and deeply moving.

Ranging widely, from Soren Kierkegaard to George Eliot, The Himalayas to The Isle of Skye, it is a book that offers us devotion and loss as expressions of love. A timely and generative reminder of our own porous and momentary selves and quite simply, a very beautiful book.

‘A work of thrilling lucidity and substance,’

Clare Harman, author of All Sorts of Lives

‘This is the book of a lifetime’s and a book about lifetimes.’

Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife

'In an era marked by rampant cruelty and selfishness, Transcendence for Beginners offers its readers various modes of the radiant life.’

Siri Hustvedt, author of Mothers, Fathers and Others

Order your copy here:

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/transcendence-for-beginners/

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Emma Warren has been documenting grassroots culture for decades. Her most recent book, Dance Your Way Home (a Guardian book of the year) was a celebration of 80s club nights, Irish dance halls and sweaty youth centres. This September, she returns with another piece of expertly researched and lovingly told social history.

Once more taking the reader onto familiar ground, Up The Youth Club is a searching look at the rise and fall of a national treasure, highlighting both the seismic impact they've had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence and re-emergence for future generations. So, for anyone who ever forgot their tuck shop money or who came close in a table tennis tournament, here is Emma on a place redolent with collective memory.

‘As a critical and emotive analysis of the Youth Club’s history Warren’s book is seminal. An inspired trip down memory lane …’

Courttia Newland

'Warren shows why youth spaces matter - not just for young people, but for all of us.'

Darren McGarvey

'Community, resilience, kindness . . . A story of people at their best.'

Richard King

Pre-order your copy here:

https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571389216-up-the-youth-club/?srsltid=AfmBOoqDMBjdFl4qkX2RbEZyeBIhyDD0wDjaHwCGDx5nMvFGTgDTAgIZ

Music used on this episode: Daniel Avery, Hazel and Gold

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On this episode we hear from playwright Hannah Patterson about her debut novel Ungone. It’s another gem from the mighty Rough Trade Books, the story of a single decision and the strange new world that grows from it.

Hannah’s central character Eve is recently returned from an Antarctic research trip to grapple with the decline of her ageing mother. Unable to visit her at the care home in which she lives, she employs Erin, a total stranger, to go instead, pretending to be her. The act has profound consequences for all three women as the fixed positions of family slip, old ties are loosened and new bonds are formed.

The transience of contemporary life is woven throughout Ungone. The characters navigating a precarious, collapsing world, the unyielding edifices of family seeming ever stranger for it. A curious tension, captured in the prominent prefix of the title that frees the word from its meaning.

“So astute, so shrewd… The theme—can we be someone else?—is beautifully laid out.”—DAVID HARE

“Ungone is as original as it is thrilling and as beautiful as it is haunting. A whip-smart examination of the complexities of end-of-life care and our sense of duty to the ones we love. It is a poignant and fascinating novel, masterfully written.” —HARRY MACQUEEN (writer/director of Supernova)

PREORDER: UNGONE

https://roughtradebooks.com/collections/books/products/ungone-hannah-patterson

UP NEXT: The wonderful Emma Warren with her latest book ‘Up The Youth Club.’ Until then, big love x

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Sarah Hall needs little introduction. Twice nominated for the Man-Booker Prize and the first and only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice, she has written ten highly acclaimed novels and short story collections.

This August she returns with her latest novel Helm, the multi-millennial tale of the strange and seductive wind which haunts the Eden Valley of her native Cumbria. The story is one that she has been unable to walk away from; a twenty year project spanning much of her career as a novelist. It is also the first to carry a maker’s mark, a guarantee of its provenance from both author and publisher (Faber) that Helm is entirely human written.

In our wide-ranging interview we discuss the dangers presented by AI to the arts, the struggles faced in capturing such an elusive presence on the page and the enduring pull of this particular story for her.

‘Sarah Hall’s new novel Helm is incandescently good. It is sexy and funny and erudite and strange, and the prose is dizzyingly good. Up there with her best.’

Sarah Perry

‘I’m awed … I wouldn’t think a novel could be at once so taut and so multifarious, expanding one’s sense of what fiction can do.’

Sarah Moss

‘Sarah Hall’s writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself. She gets better with every word she writes.’

Daisy Johnson

Music: Ian Hawgood - A Delicate Connection Not Lightly Broken

Search Field Ramble in Spotify and iTunes

Please subscribe & leave us a review while you’re there. x

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Shortlisted for this years Orwell Fiction Prize, The Accidental Immigrants is a work of political fable for our times. Dedicated to ‘all the people who lose their lives trying to reach a safer shore,’ Jo Mcmillan’s latest novel centres on a desperate British couple who are displaced from their home on a fictional Mediterranean island by a rising totalitarian regime.

Born from a disgust at the decade-long surge of European far right politics and the ineffective centrism that paves its way, The Accidental Immigrants is a novel that urges us to reflect on our own complacency and sense of exceptionalism. In Jo’s own words it is a mini revolution between two covers, a record of her resistance and an exercising of her freedom to imagine.

https://bluemoosebooks.com/books/accidental-immigrants

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On this episode we hear from Lally Macbeth about her incredible compendium ‘The Lost Folk.’ The distillation of a lifetime’s passion, it is an inclusive and comprehensive take on the meaning of folk, that asks us to rediscover, to cherish and to share the particular and the weird from which all our communities are made.

From pub signs to tea towels, bonfires to storytellers, this is a book that holds the elusive, the unownable and the collective dear. The Lost Folk’s epigraph is the motto of the Federation of the Old Cornwall Societies - ‘Gather ye the fragments that are left, that nothing be lost.’ And that is unquestionably what Lally Macbeth has done here. Packed from cover to cover with stories and anecdotes, it mixes her own experiences with a treasure trove of customs, curios and finds.

‘An exceptionally thoughtful and beautifully written celebration of the creative power that lives and breathes within our communities.’

Maxine Peake

‘Erudite, questing and endlessly fascinating.’

Katherine May

‘A splendid museum full of strange and wonderful things.’

Peter Ross

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