Robert Harris with Nihal Arthanayake
Ask Penguin
Penguin Books UK
4.1 • 550 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2022
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on the Penguin Podcast, Nihal Arthanayake talks to former journalist and best-selling novelist, Robert Harris.
Robert joins us to discuss his latest work of epic historical fiction, Act of Oblivion, out now in hardback.
He also discusses his observations on the static nature of history and humanity, how journalism informs his ability to write fiction, the potential of a simple idea to inform an entire novel, the irrationality of politics, and the UK’s shifting perspectives on the monarchy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Brought to you by Penguin. |
| 0:04.8 | Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to all kinds of writers about writing. |
| 0:19.6 | I'm Nihal Arthur Nica and today I'm speaking to a novelist |
| 0:23.0 | and former journalist who is most widely known, of course, for his best-selling works of historical |
| 0:27.3 | fiction, including Fatherland, Munich and the Cicero trilogy. His new novel, Act of Oblivion, |
| 0:33.9 | is an epic journey across continent, set in 1660 and telling the story of two |
| 0:39.0 | colonels crossing the Atlantic and on the run as they're wanted for the murder of Charles I. He |
| 0:44.5 | has been described as a master's storyteller and as the king of the page-turning thriller. And I am |
| 0:50.1 | incredibly delighted to be able to speak to Robert Harris today. Hi Robert. Hi, Neil. How are you doing? |
| 0:56.1 | I'm doing all right. Thank you. I'm relieved to have finished my book and to finally be bringing it out. |
| 1:01.5 | And it is brilliant. I have to say, I mean, as far as page turning going, if I, for some reason, |
| 1:08.4 | crash my car because I haven't been sleeping, because I've been staying up reading your book because it's so addictive, may I sue you? |
| 1:16.9 | Yeah, I think actually that's a fair that's a fair exchange for the paperback quote. |
| 1:26.2 | It's just utterly brilliant. |
| 1:29.1 | One of the things that I was really interested in this book was religion, faith, obsession with faith. |
| 1:38.0 | So I started searching around the internet for interviews that you'd done with regards to religion. And then, of course, |
| 1:45.0 | Conclave, of course, the book that you wrote. And one of the things you said was, I'm rather |
| 1:49.4 | drawn to people who take the more difficult route and try to engage with a greater thing. |
| 1:55.3 | I have empathy with that. How does that apply to active oblivion where all of these people are most certainly engaging |
| 2:05.5 | with the greater thing? Well, one of the difficulties of writing the book was that this is an era |
| 2:13.1 | where people really believed in God, 99% of people, |
| 2:20.7 | and they believed in it in the way that we believe in science or electricity. |
... |
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