logo
episode-header-image
Jan 2024
30m 15s

The best of 2023: Lydia Sandgren

MONOCLE
About this episode

To welcome in the new year, we look back at one of our favourite conversations from 2023, with Lydia Sandgren. The Swedish psychologist and author spent 10 years writing her debut novel, which won the prestigious August Prize in 2020 and sold more than 100,000 copies. She joins Georgina Godwin to mark the publication in English of ‘Collected Works’, an epic family drama about a man dealing with the tragic aftermath of his wife’s disappearance a decade ago.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Up next
Jul 9
Agustina Bazterrica at Hay Festival 2025
Georgina Godwin speaks to Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica about her shift from opera to writing, literary influences and her novels exploring oppression, capitalism and control.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
22m 34s
Jul 6
Esther Freud on family, fiction and healing
Esther Freud reflects on her childhood and literary journey to ‘My Sister and Other Lovers’, which follows two sisters facing secrets and heartbreak.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
33m 1s
Jul 2
Damien Wilkins at the 2025 Auckland Writers Festival
Georgina Godwin meets Damien Wilkins, the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Award winner for fiction with his novel ‘Delirious’. Wilkins reflects on his early literary influences, past work and transitioning to songwriting.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 
31m 6s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2021
#307 Laura Mucha: Love, Relationships & Attachment Theory
Welcome back to Ctrl Alt Delete! Today’s guest is with the amazing Laura Mucha, an ex-lawyer, author, award-winning poet, and speaker. Her first book, Love Factually / We Need to Talk About Love is the result of ten years of interviews with hundreds of strangers aged 8-95 years o ... Show More
50m 36s
Jan 2022
Debut Novelists to Look Out For in 2022 with Isy Suttie
A new year = new books, and there are plenty of brilliant new stories to look out for this year. To get your 2022 reading list started, we've brought together five of this year's most exciting debut novelists. Speaking to Isy Suttie, they introduce us to themselves and their book ... Show More
47m 9s
Mar 2021
#314 Priyanka Chopra Jonas: An Unfinished Memoir
My guest today is the wonderful Priyanka Chopra Jonas, multi-award-winning actor and producer. A former Miss World, she made her movie debut in 2002 and has appeared in more than sixty films produced in India and the United States. For all the work in association with UNICEF, she ... Show More
23m 17s
Dec 2021
Best Books of 2021- Nonfiction- Cynthia Barnett
On our final Best Books episode, Cynthia Barnett discusses The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans (Norton, July). This “absolutely captivating nature book” is one of Kirkus’ Best Books in young readers’ literature for 2021 (starred review). Then nonfiction edi ... Show More
50m 47s
May 2023
Geraldine Brooks and Jacki Lyden
This conversation features best-selling author Geraldine Brooks and former NPR journalist Jacki Lyden discussing Brooks’ book, “Horse: A Novel” before a live audience at the Kentucky Author Forum. This conversation was recorded on March 27th, 2023 at the Kentucky Center in Louisv ... Show More
57m 41s
Mar 2023
Juliana Lamy, "You Were Watching from the Sand" (Red Hen Press, 2023)
Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, You Were Watching from the Sand (Red Hen Press, 2023) is a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities. In "belly," a youn ... Show More
38m 26s
Feb 2019
#179: Dolly Alderton: On A Very Busy And Exciting Whirlwind Year
Dolly Alderton returns to Ctrl Alt Delete, again! 2018 was quite the year for Dolly with the release of Everything I Know About Love, which stayed in the Sunday Times bestseller chart for 32 weeks. She also won the Specsavers National Book Award Autobiography of the Year Award wa ... Show More
40m 47s
Dec 2021
C. K. McDonough, "Stoking Hope" (D. X. Varos, 2021)
Stoking Hope (D.X. Varos, 2021), C.K. McDonough’s debut novel, opens in an early 1900’s southwest Pennsylvania coal town. Nineteen-year-old Martha gets pregnant, her father banishes her, and she’s sent to a home for unwed mothers in neighboring West Virginia. She gives birth, and ... Show More
24m 41s