Shop Talk

What qualities helped Primo Levi survive the demented laboratory of Auschwitz? What does Milan Kundera make of being denounced as a subversive writer in communist Czechoslovakia? What does Edna O'Brien think drove generations of Irish writers into exile? This book assembles intimate conversations with some of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, centered on how region, politics and history shape their work. Philip Roth guides these discussions, offering a reflective lens on authors and their craft, and on how life’s broader conditions feed a writer’s deeply personal art.

Between colleagues and friends there is a startling candour seldom found in formal interviews, a sense that the guard is dropped and ideas flow freely. Shop Talk is a high-calibre literary symposium, profoundly revelatory and consistently enlightening.

In an engaging look at an international group of writers—Milan Kundera, Primo Levi, Isaac Singer, and Edna O'Brien—the collection examines the significance of region, history, and politics on a writer’s work and the ways life conditions influence art. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

Features

• Intimate conversations with influential writers
• Themes of region, politics, history in literature
• International cast: Kundera, Levi, Singer, O'Brien
• Candour and free exchange among colleagues
• Probing, enlightening literary discussion
• Connections between life and personal writing