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Backlisted

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Arts, Books, Leisure, Hobbies

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2019

⏱️ 67 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

W.G. Sebald's book The Rings of Saturn, first published in Germany in 1995, is the subject of this episode. Joining John and Andy to walk around this enigmatic masterpiece are the writer and swimmer Philip Hoare and the novelist Jessie Greengrass. Other books under discussion are The Years by Annie Ernaux and Fiona Benson's award-winning poetry collection Vertigo & Ghost.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)4'36 - Les Années by Annie Ernaux8'51 - Vertigo and Ghost by Fiona Benson15'03 - The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Spark your creativity with the Sims. Sometimes you might feel like you're not creative

0:07.0

and you have to go in search of your creative spark again. Maybe this is catching up with creative

0:11.9

friends, experimenting with a new look or trying out a new recipe.

0:16.0

And thanks to The Sims, inspiration is just one game and one spark away.

0:21.0

Ready to spark something? Download the Sims 4 and play for free. The Hello and welcome to Backlisted the podcast that gives new life to old books.

0:54.6

Today you find us wandering the coastal lanes of Suffolk, peering down from a crumbling cliff towards the bleached hulk of an old fishing boat poking from the sand, the maram grass rustling

1:06.1

in the wind like silk, a sense of uneasiness pervading everything.

1:11.1

I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowd fund the books they really want to read

1:16.0

And I'm Andy Miller author of the Year of Reading Dangerously and we're recording today in a bathosphere.

1:22.8

Yes.

1:23.8

We're not normally in this room.

1:25.3

What do you think?

1:26.3

I think it's quite good.

1:27.5

But it's kind of appropriate as you'll see for the, for the,

1:30.4

the kind of the resonance of the text that we're here to discuss. So joining us today is Philip

1:36.8

Hore. Hello?

1:37.8

Hello?

1:38.8

Philip is a broadcaster, curator, filmmaker and writer whose books include biographies of Stephen Tenant and Noel Coward.

1:47.1

The historical studies, Wild to Last Stand, Spike Island, the memory of a military hospital, which is a particularly good one.

1:54.8

I wonder why. I wonder why. I have full disclosure listeners. I edited that book with Philip,

2:02.3

but the quality of it is nothing to do with me and

2:05.5

all to do with him and England's Lost Eden his book Leviathan or The whale won the

...

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