This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our book critic, Marie Nicarrigan is a fan of British writer Francis Spufford's novels. So is our executive producer, Sam Brigger. And they aren't alone. Spufford books have won the Costa Book Award, the Ondagi Prize, and have been long listed for the Booker Prize. Sam Ritz Buffard's new novel called Nonsuch,

and like that one, too. Here's the interview Sam just recorded with Francis Bufford.

Two of my most enjoyable reading experiences over the last 10 years were reading Cahokia Jazz,

a 1920s noir crime novel set in an alternate American history where a sovereign majority

indigenous nation state thrives in the middle of the United States, and Golden Hill,

a novel set in 18th century New York. If I had to make a list of my top five great American novels,

Golden Hill would be high on that list, despite the fact that it takes

place before the country was founded, and its author is a Brit. Now that author, my guest

Francis Spufford, has written another incredibly entertaining book. It's called None Such. It takes

place in London during the war, as a city must try to survive the Blitz, the eight-month bombing campaign

led by the Nazis that killed over 40,000 British. Iris Hawkins, a young independent woman,

is trying to survive the nightly attacks while push against society's constraints that would keep her

in a secretarial pool until she was safely married off. Her ambition seeks something

much more expansive. While her independent side fights against it, she finds herself falling in love

with Jeff, a young man working in an even younger broadcast format, television. Oh, and did I mention

she has to fight off magic time-traveling fascists who want to travel in the past and kill Winston Churchill?

Yes, that's there too.

And a magical land called None Such and Angels, and a lot more.

Francis Buffer got to novel writing on the late side in his 50s after writing nonfiction.

He's also written Light Perpetual,

a novel that imagines the lives of five real-life people if they had not died as children in the

Blitz, and an unauthorized book in the Narnia series, which were officially written by C.S. Lewis.

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