Latest Lithouse Podcast Episodes
Hidden in the Details: Adania Shibli and Maaza Mengiste
LitHouse podcast - March 31, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe year is 1949, and the state of Israel is in its infancy. In the Negev desert, bordering Egypt, Israeli armed forces have set up camp with the mission to “cleanse it of any remaining Arabs” after the war the preceding year. They happen upon a Beduin family, a teenage girl among them, whom the...
Censorship in East and West. Ian Buruma and Helge Jordheim
LitHouse podcast - January 07, 2024 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsFreedom of expression is never absolute, but subject to laws and social conventions. Threats to freedom of thought and speech can come directly from authoritarian states or religious institutions. But they can also be self-inflicted, in the form of self-censorship. Both forms of censorship exist...
An Ode to Boyhood and Rage. Max Porter and Mattis Øybø
LitHouse podcast - November 12, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe year is 1995, and 16 year old Shy is sneaking out of the rural boarding school for “difficult” boys, named “Last Chance”. A long history of petty crime, expulsions and frustrated family members has brought him here, but now it is all soon over. With a spliff in his pocket and his Walkman loa...
A Chorus of Voices from Vietnam. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Yukiko Duke
LitHouse podcast - October 22, 2023 05:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsDo you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this earth. The Vietnam war was a watershed event in the Cold War as well as in the West’s understanding of itself. But what does the story look l...
A Love without Bounds. Aleksandar Hemon and John Freeman
LitHouse podcast - October 08, 2023 05:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn some other world, in some other life, Pinto might’ve prayed in the morning, prayed his šaharit, prayed to be relieved of his abhorrent passion. But the only prayer that came to his mind now was to the Lord to let him keep Osman for the rest of time, for his voice to be the last thing he would...
Traitor or war hero? Ian Buruma and Marte Michelet
LitHouse podcast - October 01, 2023 05:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsA masseuse who rises in the ranks to become Himmler’s confidant. A cross-dressing princess who spies for Japanese secret police in China. A Dutch Jew who personally hands over his friends to the Nazis and the gas chambers. The Collaborators is the story of three most unusual lives, all of whom ...
All Animals Are Not Equal. NoViolet Bulawayo and Priya Bains
LitHouse podcast - September 24, 2023 05:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn the novel Glory, we find ourselves in the fictional country Jidada, which is peopled with all kinds of animals; bleating sheep, a confident pig preacher, vicious dogs making up the country’s security forces, and at the very top: the Old Horse, who has ruled the country with an iron hoof ever ...
The Writer as Witness. Joyce Carol Oates and Karin Haugen
LitHouse podcast - September 02, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJoyce Carol Oates is one of the world’s greatest living writers, and is frequently cited as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. It is truly a momentous occasion that Oates will visit the House of Literature, and in doing so will be visiting Norway for the very first time. Through mor...
A Quiet Revolution. Abdulrazak Gurnah and Leila Aboulela
LitHouse podcast - August 29, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African-born writer to receive the award in close to 20 years. The Swedish Academy awarded Gurnah the prize «for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the ref...
What Should Art Be? Lecture by Joyce Carol Oates
LitHouse podcast - August 26, 2023 05:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsDo artists have a social responsibility? Should art be «pure» and not related to ethical or political issues? What, exactly, is the role of art? These are questions that the American author Joyce Carol Oates has dealt with through a long writing life, both as an author and as a professor in crea...
My African Reading List: Masande Ntshanga
LitHouse podcast - August 06, 2023 05:00 - 34 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMasande Ntshanga is a writer and poet, an editor of New Contrast Magazine and a teacher of creative writing. For his debut novel The Reactive, he was awarded the Betty Trask Award, while his second novel, Triangulum, was nominated for the Nommo Prize for Best Speculative Fiction Novel written by...
My African Reading List: Maaza Mengiste
LitHouse podcast - July 23, 2023 05:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMaaza Mengiste is a writer, photographer and teacher of creative fiction at Wesleyan University. Her 2010 debut novel, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, depicts the bloody revolution in 1970s Ethiopia, and was named one of the 10 Best Contemporary African Books by the Guardian. Her second novel The Shado...
Forwards Toward the Past. Masande Ntshanga and Julia Wiedlocha
LitHouse podcast - July 09, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe year is 2043, and an astronomer at the South-African Space Agency receives a package filled with documents, which contain a warning that the earth will end in 10 years. The documents are diary entries and audio tapes by a girl, relaying first her adolescence in the 1990s, when she explores ...
Brave New Worlds: Personal lecture by Masande Ntshanga
LitHouse podcast - June 25, 2023 07:54 - 50 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratings«I’ve always found Science Fiction to be a form that’s irrevocably linked to critiques of power and societal structures,» writer Masande Ntshanga has said. During his adolescence, he read a lot of science fiction, and his latest novel, Triangulum, makes use of several elements from the genre. S...
Did Hemingway Write Transgender Literature? Lecture by Torrey Peters
LitHouse podcast - June 11, 2023 05:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsWhat is transgender literature? Is it simply works by writers who identify as transgender? Or might it be thought of as a lens to read through, or a certain kind of attention? If it is the latter: in what tradition might we locate transgender literature? In this talk, American author Torrey Pet...
Beyond the binary. Torrey Peters and Carline Tromp. Introduction by Christine Jentoft
LitHouse podcast - June 04, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsTorrey Peters rocketed into the international literary scene with her debut novel Detransition, Baby, the first novel written by a trans woman to become an international best seller. Peters explores the complexeties of trans life, and compares transitioning to cis women starting over after a div...
With Your Life in the Balance. Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nonhle Mbuthuma and Bergdis Joelsdottir
LitHouse podcast - May 28, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratings«Every time we say it can’t get any worse it does,» writer Tsitsi Dangarembga has said about the situation in her home country Zimbabwe. The UNs special envoy has reacted to the arbitrary arrests of activists and politicians from the opposition. Last year, Dangarembga was herself convicted afte...
Who Owns the Land and the Sea? Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen, Nonhle Mbuthuma and Silje Ask Lundberg
LitHouse podcast - May 28, 2023 06:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJust weeks after the historical film Ellos Eatnu/Let the River Flow had premiered, lead actress and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen was back in chains – for real, this time. Together with fellow Sami activists, she barricaded the Department of Oil and Energy, to protest that the authorities ha...
The Superwoman Black Feminist. Tsitsi Dangarembga and Maaza Mengiste
LitHouse podcast - May 21, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThrough more than 30 years, Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga has made her mark as a writer and director. With her trilogy of novels following Tambu, she portrays a period of upheaval for her home country, from life under the colonial regime of Rhodesia to the struggle for freedom and the disillusio...
My Brilliant Friend from Zimbabwe. About Tsitsi Dangarembga's trilogy
LitHouse podcast - May 21, 2023 06:00 - 56 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsA young girl from a poor family fighting to get the education she wants, but which is primarily reserved for her brother. A beautiful and worldly friend who brings her out of her shell. The history of a region told through the childhood of a young girl. This could be the description of Elena Fe...
The Gospel of Lucy. Jamaica Kincaid and Ida Pallin Bostadløkken
LitHouse podcast - April 02, 2023 06:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJamaica Kincaid is one of the greatest authors of feminist and postcolonial literature of our time. In her handful of novels and a collection of short stories, she has portrayed themes such as structural racism, otherness and mother-daughter relationships with soberness and astonishing clarity. ...
When the World Collapses. Iryna Tsilyk and Åsne Seierstad
LitHouse podcast - March 19, 2023 07:00 - 45 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratings“How will you show the destroyed city?” The Trofymchuks live in a small city in Donbas’ “Red Zone”, Ukraine, which since Russia’s invasion in 2014 has seen frequent shellings and the breakdown of infratructure. They plan to make a film showing their new daily life, and at the dinner table discu...
Red Lies. Lea Ypi and Marianne Marthinsen
LitHouse podcast - March 12, 2023 07:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsAs a little girl, Lea Ypi regarded Stalin and Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha as dependable father figures, she liked how her teacher Nora har simple answers to everything, and what she wanted most of all, was to be named a pioneer. But when the communist regime falls in 1991, the young Lea suddenl...
The Universal Man Caroline Criado Perez and Linn Stalsberg
LitHouse podcast - March 05, 2023 07:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe world in which we live is by and large designed and built for “the ideal man”: The size of cell phones, seat belts in cars, the development of medication – there are countless examples. And most of this we take for granted, that is how used we are, both women and men, to men being the norm, ...
Shattered Innocence. Bret Easton Ellis and Emma Clare Gabrielsen
LitHouse podcast - February 19, 2023 07:00 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIt is a rare occation when the author of cult books such as American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction releases his first novel in 13 years. For readers of Bret Easton Ellis’s earlier books, The Shards has a familiar atmosphere, and he doesn’t shy away from explicit descriptions of sex or viole...
The Womanly Face of War. Maaza Mengiste and Sofi Oksanen
LitHouse podcast - February 12, 2023 07:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThe young girl Hirut starts working for a wealthy couple, but is soon brought into their many quarrels, their jealousy and grief over the loss of a child. This is Ethiopia in the 1930s. Things go from bad to worse when Italy, led by Mussolini, invades the country, and Hirut’s master is tasked wi...
My African Reading List: Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
LitHouse podcast - January 19, 2023 10:54 - 39 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsYvonne Adhiambo Owuor is an author, screenwriter, and former head of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. In 2003, the Kenyan won the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her 2013 debut novel, Dust, won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. In 2015, Owuor visited the House of Literature, ...
My African Reading List: Nadifa Mohamed
LitHouse podcast - December 29, 2022 19:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsNadifa Mohamed is the writer of three novels, with the two first, Black Mamba and The Orchard of Lost Souls available in Norwegian translation so far. In 2017, Mohamed participated in The House of Literature’s festival on Somali literature, A nation of poets. During the pandemic, she interviewed...
Broken Promises. Damon Galgut and Nosizwe Lise Baqwa
LitHouse podcast - December 25, 2022 19:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsDamon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Promise follows the white South-African Swart family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The story follows the nuclear family through the waning years of the apartheid state, through the 1994 liberation and until the children are grown, close to our ...
Bless Our Blue Bodies. Warsan Shire and Athena Farrokhzad
LitHouse podcast - December 24, 2022 12:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsWarsan Shire is a critically acclaimed and award winning British poet. In 2016, the artist Beyoncé named her one of her favorite poets, and she appears both on the album «Lemonade» and in the film «Black Is King». In 2014, she was the first poet named Young Poet Laureate of London. Shire, born ...
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