Harriett Gilbert talks with Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah about his hauntingly beautiful novel Paradise.

It tells the story of Yusuf, a 12 year-old boy living in East Africa at the beginning of the 20th Century. Sold off to settle his father’s debts, Yusuf embarks on a journey across the African continent. Through his naive and innocent eyes, the journey starts out as an adventure, but every wonderous thing Yusuf sees, every glimpse of paradise, is polluted by violence, the growing influence of colonialism, and the looming spectre of World War One.

Paradise is a stunning novel - a multi-faceted, vivid exploration of the shifting culture of Africa at the turn of the century. It’s layered with mythology, Biblical and Koranic symbolism, and an unflinching insight into the effects of colonialism.

Harriett Gilbert talks with Michelle de Kretser about her eighth novel, Scary Monsters, which won the 2023 Rathbones Folio Fiction Prize.

This diptych novel consists of the tale of two immigrants, one in the past, and one in a dystopian future that seems all too possible. Which story to start with? That’s the reader’s decision.

In the past, Lili. Her family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a child. Now, in the 1980s, she teaches in Montpellier, in the south of France. Her life revolves around her desires to carve out a space for herself, and become a great woman like Simone de Beauvoir. She tries to make friends, observes the treatment of other immigrants to France who don’t have the shield of an Australian passport, and continually has to dodge her creepy downstairs neighbour, as stories of serial killers dominate news headlines.

In the future, Lyle works for a government department in near-future Australia where Islam has been banned, a pandemic has only recently passed, and the elderly are encouraged to take advantage of The Amendment - a law that allows, if not encourages, assisted suicide. An Asian migrant, Lyle is terrified of repatriation and spends all his energy on embracing "Australian values", which in this future involve rampant consumerism, an obsession with the real estate market, and never mentioning the environmental catastrophe even as wildfires choke the air with a permanent smoke cloud. He's also preoccupied by his callously ambitious wife, his rebellious children and his elderly mother who refuses to capitulate to his desperate desire to invisibly blend in with society.

We love it, not just because of the playful dual structure, but because Michelle’s writing tackles the monsters - racism, misogyny, ageism - with keen observations and biting humour, shining a light not just on how society treats newcomers, but how we relate to our idea of our shared history, and what kind of future will be built from the world we live in now.

Harriett Gilbert is joined by one of the boldest writers of her generation, Ottessa Moshfegh, to delve into her second novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. This twisted Sleeping Beauty story is told from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist, a twentysomething art school graduate who, after the death of her parents, quits her gallery job to heal her pain by drugging herself into a year-long hibernation. Her only ties to the waking world are the bodega which she routinely slouches to for coffee, the most unscrupulous psychiatrist in New York, and her best friend, and object of contempt, Reva. We love this book because it’s a hypnotic, wickedly humorous character study of a woman who is broken, toxic, yet utterly fascinating. Even if you don’t take her to your heart, this character will linger in your mind every time you have a long lie in bed.

Image: Ottessa Moshfegh (Credit: Jake Belcher)

Novelist Meg Rosoff joins Harriett Gilbert to answer listeners' questions about one of her best-loved novels, How I Live Now.

It is the story of Daisy, an American teenager shipped off to live with her aunt and cousins in England. What is at first an idyllic escape into English countryside life is shattered at the onset of War, when England is suddenly occupied by an unknown enemy. Daisy finds herself struggling to survive and keep her new family safe as they face violence, fear and starvation, while at the same time experiencing her first love, with her own cousin - Edmond.

Beautiful, brutal, and laced with Daisy’s razor-sharp, jaded teenage humour, this is a book that brings readers into a world that feels incredibly, terrifyingly real, and will likely stay in your memory for years to come.

(Photo: Meg Rosoff. Credit: Glora Hamlyn/Penguin Books)