Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six autobiographical novels, published in Norway between 2009 and 2011 under the series title *Min Kamp* (‘My Struggle’) have excited controversy and critical acclaim in equal measure. Knausgaard’s unflinching and almost uncritical laying on of detail has led some critics to call him ‘the Norwegian Proust’. ‘There is something ceaseless ... Show More
Nov 12
Ken Worpole & Melissa Benn: Brightening from the East
Ken Worpole, ‘a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition’ (New Statesman), has written on many subjects during his long career, from cemeteries to hospices to the novels of Alexand ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 5
Paul B. Preciado & Nathalie Olah: Dysphoria Mundi
With Testo Junkie, Pornotopia, An Apartment in Uranus and Can the Monster Speak, Paul B. Preciado became established as one of the most exciting and challenging social thinkers of our time. His latest book Dysphoria Mundi (Fitzcarraldo), a mutant text assembled from essays, philo ... Show More
1h 12m
Jan 2018
132. Karl Ove Knausgaard (writer) – The Way I Should Be in the World
Wherever you are right now, take a look around you. Let your eyes rest on the first thing that catches your attention. For me, while writing this, it’s a bowl in Big Think’s offices. Highly polished, assembled, it seems, from curved, stained strips of wood. If I kept going, I mig ... Show More
42m 56s
Dec 2024
Book Club: "Small Things Like These," by Claire Keegan
<p>Clare Keegan's slim 2021 novella about one Irishman's crisis of conscience during the Christmas season, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has also been adapted into a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/movies/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy.htm ... Show More
51m 41s
Apr 2025
693 Understanding the Wonders of Nature (with Alan Lightman) | My Last Book with Alan Lightman
In today's world of specialization, Alan Lightman is that rare individual who has accomplished remarkable things in two very different realms. As a physicist with a Ph.D. from Cal Tech, he's taught at Harvard and MIT and advised the United Nations. As a novelist, he's written awa ... Show More
56m 13s
Nov 2024
Book Club: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"
<p>It begins with one of the most iconic lines in literature: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”</p><p>“One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel García Márquez ... Show More
41m 9s