In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, we’re learning about The Vendor of Sweets by R.K. Narayan with writer, editor and academic Claire Chambers.

The Vendor of Sweets tells the story of Jagan, a Hindu sweetmaker who strictly follows the principles of Mahatma Ghandi. When his layabout son, Mali, decides he wants to study creative writing in America, Jagan initially supports him, but when a newly westernised Mali returns to India with an American wife and a plan to manufacture novel-writing machines, Jagan’s patience wears thin.

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras (now Chennai), India in 1906. His first novel, Swami and Friends, was published in 1930 and introduced the world to Malgudi, the fictional Indian town in which many of Narayan’s subsequent novels, including The Vendor of Sweets, are set. In 1958, his novel The Guide, won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy. Narayan wrote 15 novels, 9 books of non-fiction, and 6 collections of short stories. He died in 2001.

Claire Chambers is Professor of Global Literature at the University of York and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She specialises in literature from South Asia, the Perso-Arab world, and their diasporas. She is the author of ​several books, including ​​​Britain Through Muslim Eyes (2015), ​​​​Rivers of Ink​: Selected Essays​ (2017)​, and ​​​Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels (2019)​. She edited Desi Delicacies: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia (2021), co-edited ​​A Match Made in Heaven (2020), and co-authored Storying Relationships (2021)​​. Her forthcoming book is Decolonizing Disease: Pandemics, Public Health, and Pathogenic Novels and will be published by Liverpool University Press in 2026.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By R.K. Narayan:

Malgudi Days (1943)

The Guide (1958)

By others:

Rayamana by Valmiki (c. 500 BCE)

Mahābhārata by Vyasa (c. 400 BCE)

Hind Swaraj by Mohandas Gandhi (1909)

Kanthapura by Raja Rao (1938)

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

'Toba Tek Singh' in Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition by Saadat Hasan Manto (1955)

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (2023)

The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi (2023)

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LINKS

Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels by Claire Chambers (affiliate link)

Translation and Decolonisation, edited by Claire Chambers and Ipek Demir (affiliate link)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter

The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, novelist and academic Norman Ravvin joins us to talk about Cocksure by Mordecai Richler, a novel Anthony Burgess called ‘grimly funny’.

Cocksure tells the story of Mortimer Griffin, a publisher whose routine life collides with the world of the Star Maker, a grotesque Hollywood movie producer who buys Mortimer’s publishing house and sets his life on a downward spiral. Mortimer suffers a breakdown of his marriage, has to contend with a school teaching the children the work of Marquis de Sade, and begins to question his identity as a Canadian Anglican. Eventually Mortimer uncovers the Star Maker’s horrific secret to making blockbuster movies.

Mordecai Richer was born in 1931 in Montreal, Canada. After working for the Canadian Broadcasting Service in the 1950s, he moved to London where he wrote seven of his novels, including Cocksure. Returning to Montreal in 1972, he wrote three more novels, including Barney’s Version, which was adapted into a film in 2010. Richler died in 2001.

Norman Ravvin is a writer, critic, and teacher. His publications include the novels The Girl Who Stole Everything, Café des Westens and Lola by Night. In 2023 he published Who Gets In: An Immigration Story, which blends memoir, history and archival work to tell the story of his grandfather's efforts to bring his family after him from Poland in the early 1930s. A native of Calgary, he lives in Montreal, where he teaches at Concordia University in the Department of Religions and Cultures.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Mordecai Richler:

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959)

The Incomparable Atuk (1963)

St. Urbain's Horseman (1971)

Barney's Version (1997)

By others:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900)

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)

The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West (1939)

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)

Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano (1997)

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)

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LINKS

Norman Ravvin Online

Who Gets In: An Immigration Story by Norman Ravvin (affiliate link)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

International Anthony Burgess Foundation's free Substack newsletter

The theme music for the Ninety-Nine Novels podcast is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction.

In this episode, Graham Foster explores the mysterious castle of Gormenghast, the setting of Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, with writer and editor Rob Maslen.

Titus Groan begins with the birth of an heir to Lord Groan, the ruler of the castle of Gormenghast. As baby Titus comes into the world, the castle is beset by scheming and violence, primarily at the hands of Steerpike, an exceptionally clever, but malevolent, teenager. As he manipulates the other residents of the castle, his plotting threatens the traditions and rules that govern life within its walls, bringing madness and death to the Groan family.

Mervyn Peake was born in 1911 in China, where his father was a medical missionary. After returning to England in 1922, he studied at the Croydon School of Art and the Royal Academy of Art. After building a reputation as an artist and illustrator during the Second World War, he published the novels that make up the Gormenghast Trilogy between 1946 and 1959. He died in 1968.

Rob Maslen is Emeritus Professor at the University of Glasgow. In 2015 he founded Glasgow’s MLitt in Fantasy, the first graduate programme in the world specifically dedicated to the study of fantasy and the fantastic, and from 2020 to 2022 he served as Co-director, with Professor Dimitra Fimi, of the Glasgow Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. He has written three books: Elizabethan Fictions (1997), Shakespeare and Comedy (2005), and The Shakespeare Handbook (2008), and has edited Mervyn Peake’s Collected Poems (2008), as well as co-editing Mervyn Peake’s Complete Nonsense (2011). He has published many essays on early modern literature and twentieth-century fantasy and science fiction.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Mervyn Peake:

The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1949)

Gormenghast (1950)

Titus Alone (1959)

Mervyn Peake: The Man and his Art (2008)

By others:

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759-67)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

Peter Pan/Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie (1911)

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

The Castle by Franz Kafka (1926)

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

In Parenthesis by David Jones (1937)

The Aerodrome by Rex Warner (1941)

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (1952)

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954-5)

The Famished Road by Ben Okri (1991)

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (2000)

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng (2017)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

Babel by R.F. Kuang (2022)

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LINKS

The City of Lost Books, Rob Maslen's blog.

Mervyn Peake: Collected Poems, edited by Rob Maslen

Mervyn Peake: Complete Nonsense, edited by Rob Maslen and G. Peter Winnington

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.