A simmering summer in Greece, rare snails, dystopia with a twist: new fiction by Amy Taylor, Leif Enger and Maria Reva

Aug 21, 2025
54 mins

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Episode Description

The Bookshelf continues to explore new fiction, beginning in this episode with Ruins by Amy Taylor, a plunge into holiday chaos during a simmering summer in Greece. Maria Reva’s Endling takes us to Ukraine, where an eccentric scientist is breeding rare snails. And, Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse...dystopia with a twist.

BOOKS 

Amy Taylor, Ruins, Allen & Unwin 

Maria Reva, Endling, Virago 

Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse, Grove Press 

GUESTS 

Mark Mordue, music writer, journalist, and poet – whose books include Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave 

Robert Goodman, critic who writes regularly for the Newtown Review of Books and on his website, Pile by the Bed

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

  • Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal
  • On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
  • Louise Erdrich, works
  • Lanny, Max Porter
  • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
  • By Night in Chile; 2666, Roberto Bolaño
  • Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey 
  • Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
  • Chronicles, Bob Dylan 
  • Just Kids, Patti Smith 
  • Road Series, Hugo Race 
  • Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, Will Hermes 
  • Perdido Street Station, China Mieville 
  • Babel; Yellowface; Katabasis, R.F. Kuang
  • The Animals in That Country, Laura Jean McKay 
  • The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation, Charlotte Beradt
  • The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas
  • Salvage, Jennifer Mills
  • Juice, Tim Winton
  • Arborescence; Hovering, Rhett Davis
  • Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky

CREDITS

  • Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
  • Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
  • Sound engineer, John Jacobs and Tegan Nicholls
  • Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown
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