Ben Lerner, Ian Rankin, Auto Fiction

Available for over a year

Elizabeth Day talks to the novelist Ben Lerner about his latest novel The Topeka School, a companion piece to his previous novels Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04. The novel explores a period between the 1990s and present day America and shines a light on toxic masculinity, the corruption of political discourse and a high school debating style called "The Spread". Works of autofiction are often held up as great literary experiments when written by male authors like Ben Lerner but are women writers allowed the same accolades? Olivia Sudjic and Meena Kandasamy explore what it means to be a women writing highly autobiographical fiction. In her latest novel Exquisite Cadavers, Meena Kandasamy exposes the workings of her inspiration to the reader, she tells us why. And king of crime writing Ian Rankin discusses his forgotten novel Westwind. First published to only 1,000 copies, it's been out of print and out of mind for thirty years. Rankin tells us why he returned to republish the tech thriller about satellites, spies, surveillance and why it's surprisingly timely for readers today.