Tolstoy said, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And why are we telling you that in a Shakespeare podcast? I'll clear that up in a second.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.

It's hard to think of an unhappier family than the one Edward St. Aubin began to chronicle

in 1992 with the publication of Nevermind, the first of what would become the Patrick

Melrose series.

Five novels of torture, brutality, drug addiction,

and denial all within the life of one upper-class English family.

And for Edward St. Aubin, much of it is autobiographical.

So the publishers of the Hogarth Shakespeare Project must have been thrilled when

St. Aubin's agent contacted them to say that if they were looking for a contemporary author to adapt one

of Shakespeare's most dysfunctional families, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, and their raving, vindictive

father, King Lear, St. Aubin was their man.

Edward St. Aubin's new book for Hogarth is titled Dunbar.

The title character is a modern-day king, a media mogul on the scale of Rupert Murdoch, whose

evil daughters have him locked away against his will in a psychiatric hospital. Earlier this

month, Edward St. Aubin was in New York,

and we were lucky enough to get him into the studio

to talk about his writing process, King Lear,

and whether it's true that every unhappy family

is unhappy in its own way.

We call this podcast the untented woundings of a father's curse.

Edward St. Aubin is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

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