The Minor Books Podcast

Christmas Gate

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by Ben Sims, who has a Substack newsletter called 'Short Stories Once a Month', to discuss Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland (1912) and Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (1986).

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Rhapsodes

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 23:57:28 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined by David Egan, Koç University, Istanbul, to talk about Robert Bringhurst's A Story As Sharp As a Knife and Ismail Kadare's The File on H (tr. David Bellos).

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Heaven's Thirst

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:00:00 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by Alistair Henfrey, Head of English at Winchester College, to talk about Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast: A Memoir (1996) and Adam Mars-Jones's The Waters of Thirst (1993).

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Plums and Poppies

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 23:01:00 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined, for the last episode in our series on short story collections, by Henry Oliver, author among other things of the Substack newsletter The Common Reader, to discuss Jane Gardam's 1994 collection Going Into a Dark Room.

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Indus Valley Picnics

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 19:49:21 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by Supriya Nair, one of the hosts of The Lit Pickers Podcast, to discuss the Pakistani-American writer Daniyal Mueenuddin's 2009 collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

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Cat Crystal

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 11:52:18 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined again by Rey Conquer, author of the forthcoming How To Live Together (Fitzcarraldo), to discuss Adalbert Stifter's Motley Stones (1853, tr. Isabel Fargo Cole, NYRB Classics).

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Crocodile Shops

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 20:44:11 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by the writer and translator Joshua Billings to talk about Bruno Schulz's 1934 collection Sklepy Cynamonowe, translated from the Polish by Celina Wieniewska in 1963.

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Labour Writes

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 23:27:12 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined by Lucy Jackson, Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, to talk about the American writer Tillie Olsen's 1961 collection of short stories, Tell Me a Riddle.

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Dolphins in the Bosphorus

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 21:02:21 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by Peter Cherry of the British Institute at Ankara in the first episode of a new series about short story collections. In this episode, they discuss Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe's translation of selected stories by the Turkish writer Sait Faik: A Useless Man (2014).

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Tunnel Vision

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:30 GMT

Raph and Nikhil talk to Peter Huhne about Ernesto Sabato's El Túnel (1948, tr. Margaret Sayers Peden) and Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac's D'Entre Les Morts (1954, tr. Geoffrey Sainsbury).

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That Light

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:28 GMT

Nikhil and Raph talk to Henry Eliot about Yūko Tsushima's Territory of Light (1977/78, tr. Geraldine Harcourt, 2018) and Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell (1966, tr. Robyn Cresswell, 2013).

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Indignity

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 16:41:34 GMT

Raph and Nikhil talk to novelist and critic Anjum Hasan about Anita Desai's In Custody (1984) and Dag Solstad's Shyness and Dignity (1994, tr. Sverre Lyngstad 2006).

Errata: We give the wrong date of publication for both books at points during the episode. In Custody was published not in 1988 but 1984; Shyness and Dignity was published not in 1999 but 1994. At 5:48, when Anjum Hasan talks about the Urdu language’s relationship with the Indian state, the sentence should have been ‘Urdu is not patronised to the extent that Hindi is’.

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Maid in Hungary

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 23:01:35 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by writer and translator Arshia Sattar to discuss Magda Szabo's The Door (1987, tr. Len Rix 2005) and Margaret Forster's Lady's Maid (1990).

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Death in Siena

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 23:00:56 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined by Richard Foster, teacher and museum curator at Winchester College, to talk about Hisham Matar's A Month in Siena (2019) and T. J. Clark's The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006).

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Motherland du Lac

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 23:00:00 GMT

Nikhil and Raph are joined by Peter Cherry, author of Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film: Transcultural Identity and Migration in Britain and Assistant Director of the British Institute at Ankara, to discuss Yusuf Atılgan's Motherland Hotel (tr. Fred Stark, 1973/2017) and Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac (1984).

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English Bachelors

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:00:29 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined by Oliver Soden, author of Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, to discuss two novels about spiritualist mediums: Muriel Spark's The Bachelors and R. K. Narayan's The English Teacher.

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Bloody Drinkard

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:48:12 GMT

Nikhil and Raph discuss Amos Tutuola's 1952 novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard and Angela Carter's 1979 collection of dark fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber.

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All Soldiers

Wed, 15 May 2024 22:15:33 GMT

Raph and Nikhil welcome guest Minoo Dinshaw, author of Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman, to talk about Javier Marías's All Souls and Javier Cercas's Soldiers of Salamis.

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The Quest for Traces

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 21:28:11 GMT

Nikhil and Raph discuss two experimental biographies of minor writers: A. J. A. Symons's The Quest for Corvo and Iman Mersal's Traces of Inayat.

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The Cruel Way to Trebizond

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 20:53:09 GMT

Raph and Nikhil are joined by Rey Conquer, author of Reading Colour: George, Rilke, Kandinsky, Lasker-Schüler, to talk about Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond and Ella Maillart's The Cruel Way.

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Abandonment and Trickery

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 23:17:07 GMT

Nikhil and Raph discuss Elena Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment and Domenico Starnone's Trick.

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Ali, Nino and the Orientalist

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 12:01:53 GMT

Raph and Nikhil discuss Kurban Said's Ali and Nino and Tom Reiss's The Orientalist.

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