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PODCAST

LitHouse podcast

The House of Literature in Oslo - Litteraturhuset

LitHouse is the English language podcast from the House of Literature (Litteraturhuset) in Oslo, presenting adapted versions of lectures and conversations featuring international writers and thinkers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

society & culture books

All Episodes

1:05:31

Strategies for Survival: Ocean Vuong and Priya Bains

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/10/20

Poet and writerOcean Vuonghas in just a few years established himself as a leading literary voice of his generation. With his own life as a point of departure – born in Vietnam and grown up in a working-class family in the US – his raw and crystal-clear writing deals with war and trauma, immigration experiences, class, masculinity, sexuality and alienation.In his latest novel,The Emperor of Gladness,we meet 19-year-old Vietnamese-American Hai, as he is about to end his own life, but he is saved by a

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1:10:24

Transformation and liberation: Édouard Louis and...

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/10/06

With his seventh novel,Collapse,Édouard Louishas now completed his celebrated family saga about his own upbringing and family.Louis writes ruthlessly and skillfully about subjects such as class distinctions, violence, racism, gender, and political power and powerlessness, and his writing has become a point of reference and inspiration for writers across the world. Through the seven novels making up his family saga, he portrays the social structures that are the basis for the violence he experienced

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56:48

L'émigrante de classe: Annie Ernaux et Kjerstin Aukrust

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/09/29

En octobre 2022, Annie Ernaux a reçu le prix Nobel de littérature, en tant que première femme française, « pour le courage et l'acuité clinique avec lesquels elle découvre les racines, les étrangetés et les contraintes collectives de la mémoire personnelle ». Avec des livres comme Les Années, Une femme et L'Événement, qui font tomber les barrières entre autobiographie, fiction et sociologie, Ernaux a gagné un large lectorat dans le monde entier, et a agrandi ce qui est considéré comme un langage

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1:07:43

The Break with the West: Omar El Akkad and Yohan...

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/09/22

«The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single questions, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?» One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El AkkadThe lack of a response from the West to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza reveals how the West values certain lives more than others, according to author and journalistOmar El Akkad. For El Akkad, born in Egypt and raised in Qatar, the West long

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1:04:03

The Storyteller of Sisterhood: Chimamanda Ngozi...

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/09/01

When Nigerian authorChimamanda Adichiepublishes her first novel in 12 years, it is a real event. With award winning and critically acclaimed titles such asAmericanah, Half of a Yellow SunandWe Should All Be Feminists, Adichie has attracted a large readership across the world.Both in her novels and in her non-fiction, she explores what it means to be a woman and a feminist in the world today, and through her own books as well as the many aspiring writers she mentors and influences, she contributes to

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32:28

My African Reading List: Wole Talabi

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/08/25

Wole Talabi is a Nigerian science fiction author. He is best known for his short stories, most of them collected in the collections Incomplete Solutions and Convergence Problems. His latest novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon won the prestigious Nommo award for best novel. Talabi has also edited the anthologies Africanfuturism and Mothersound, both central publications in African fantasy and science fiction. This is Talabi’s reading list:-Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon-Kojo Laing, Woman of the

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56:03

The many lives of Amna: Youssef Rakha and Teresa Pepe

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/08/11

Youssef Rakhais an award-winning author of both novels and poetry, as well as a journalist and a photographer. I 2009, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Arabic writers under 40. He is known forThe Crocodiles-trilogy, following a group of poets before, during and after the 2011 revolution.The Dissentersis his first novel written in English.The story is told by Nour. When his mother dies, he starts cleaning out her things in the attic, and soon discovers a far more complex

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47:28

Monsters and Dystopias: New Arabic Literature

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/06/30

What characterizes the new Arabic literature? Writers involved in the Arab Spring are now imprisoned, exiled or living with the political repression, wars and disillusionment that has marked the region ever since. How are these experiences expressed in literature and the broader culture?Teresa Pepe is professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo. Her research has focused on Arabic literature and culture during and after the Arab Spring. She is the author of the book Blogging from Egypt:

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1:09:32

Liberation and Revolution: Slimani, Rakha and Habiballah

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/06/16

The Arab Spring is when Egyptian Youssef Rakha first starts writing novels. Moroccan Soukaina Habiballah publishes her first poetry collection shortly after, while French Moroccan Leïla Slimani works as a journalist at the time, reporting on the protests unfolding throughout Northern Africa and the Maghreb, before turning to fiction.How have these experiences shaped their writing? All three writers explore the quest for freedom, whether on a personal or a collective level. Can we talk about a

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52:25

Diary of a Thief: Abdulrazak Gurnah og Nadifa Mohamed

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/06/09

Abdulrazak Gurnahwas awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2021, as the first African-born writer in almost 20 years, for having, in the jury’s reasong, «highlighted the impact of colonialism and the fate of refugees». Now, in his first new novel following the prize, he has turned his focus closer to our own time. The novel has been titledTheft. But what is stolen, and who is the thief?In a postcolonial East Africa in the early 1990s, marked by global change, we meet the oy Badar. He is sent away

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55:24

Pride and Prejudice: Leïla Slimani and Kjerstin Aukrust

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/06/02

French MoroccanLeïla Slimani‘s own family was the inspiration when she started her critically acclaimed trilogy:The Country of Others, Watch Us Danceand this year’s publication,J'emporterai le feu(“I will carry the fire”).We follow the Belhaj family through three generations, from when Mathilde leaves France to follow her new husband Amine to his home country Morocco after the second world war, and their struggle to find their place between two cultures that are rather hostile to each other, to

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1:05:10

European epics: Jenny Erpenbeck and Mattis Øybø

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/04/14

With her deep and fearless portrayals of German and European history,Jenny Erpenbeckis a unique voice in world literature. Her authorship is widely considered to be among the most important of our time, leaving critics to discusswhen, and notifshe receives the Nobel prize for literature. This year, her latest novelKairoswas awarded the International Booker prize. InKairos, we follow an increasingly dysfunctional couple, mirroring the dying nation state of the DDR, where the novel is set. It is a

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58:22

The Empire Strikes Back: GauZ’ and Yohan Shanmugaratnam

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/03/24

«The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.»In a Sephora-store on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a security guard is watching the shoppers. In the early 70’s, Ferdinand arrives in Paris to start his new life and needs to learn the ropes. In the 90’s, friends Ossiri and Kassoum work nights in the Parisian underground.Three generations of immigrants tell their stories inStanding Heavy,

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56:59

The Winding River of Time. Elif Shafak and Marte...

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/03/10

«Water remembers. It is humans who forget.»A droplet of water finds its way from ancient Mesopotamia to a street urchin in 1840’s London and on to a Yazidi family in present day Iraq. Three people’s lives and destinies are connected by two rivers – the Thames and the Tigris – and the water which flows through them.In the novelThere Are Rivers in the Sky,Elif Shafakweaves together lost empires, colonial plunder, modern conflicts, and the study of water in a plot stretching from ancient time to the

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27:10

My African Reding List: Jennifer Makumbi

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/03/03

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan British writer, known for her debut novel Kintu, as well as the short story collection Manchester Happened and the novel The First Woman. She has been awarded the Coomonwealth Short Story Prize and the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and also been named one of the 100 most influental Africans by New African magazine.This is Makumbi’s reading list:Brit Bennett, The Vanishing HalfYvonne Battle-Felton, Curdle CreekChinua Achebe, Things Fall ApartArrow of

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1:05:39

The History of Panafricanism. Lecture by Hakim Adi

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/02/17

From intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois to activist Malcolm X, from heads of state Kwame Nkrumah and Muammar Gaddafi to poet Aimé Césaire and artist Bob Marley – they have all played a role in the history of panafricanism.Panafricanismis a political, intellectual and cultural movement that was first formed around the turn of the last century among Africans in the diaspora, in the UK, the US and the West Indies. They fought for a shared, Black identity, for decolonization of the African continent, and for

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52:05

Abuse and survival: Neige Sinno and Hadia Tajik

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/02/10

In the wake of #metoo, the French literary scene has been marked by multiple stories of sexual abuse. Books like Vanessa Springora'sConsentand Camille Kouchner'sThe Familia Grandehave sparked debates about abuse culture, consent, and the misuse of authority.Neige Sinno'sSad Tigercan be read as part of this line of publications, while also giving the conversation a literary context. While it is necessary to denounce abuse, doing so is also a burden, and Sinno’s approach to dealing with her own story

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44:04

A Brief History of African Dreaming. Lecture by Wole...

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/02/05

For decades, African speculative fiction has weaved together past and future, combining myths and legends with space exploration and social criticism and broadening the scope of both African and speculative literatures.In this original lecture, invited by The House of Literature and recorded digitally, Nigerian author Wole Talabi presents a timeline of African speculative fiction from its early beginnings and until the present day. Here, he reflects on the influence and importance of the genre,

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1:02:15

A Network of Autocrats: Anne Applebaum

LitHouse podcast ·

2025/01/06

The word «dictator» might make you think of a select few evil men of the past, who sat alone on their thrones and ruled far-flung kingdoms with an iron fist. Today’s reality is something very different: The autocrats of the world are playing on the same team, doing deals in secrecy to maintain power and keep their riches. They share troll farms and other resources across political lines, either they’re communists, nationalists, or Shia radicalists, and hide their wealth in tax havens all over the

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52:20

A lasting curse: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and...

LitHouse podcast ·

2024/12/15

When British-UgandanJennifer Nansubuga Makumbiwanted her debut novelKintupublished in Europe, publisher after publisher told her no – the novel was “too African”: It was neither about the colonial period nor about Idi Amin, the two things about Uganda that Western readers have heard of. And also, the characters had such complicated names. They couldn’t imagine any European readers would like to learn something new about Uganda and its history.Makumbi’s novel is an epic family saga, taking us through

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124 results

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