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Elizabeth Day talks to Tessa Hadley about her eighth novel Free Love set in the 1960s as sexual revolution fills the air. As with some of her previous novels, Everything Will Be Alright and The Past, the setting is familial, a comfortably married suburban couple, Roger and Phyllis, having their friends’ son, Nicky, over for dinner. It’s the start of an illicit affair between Phyllis and Nicky, and as the family implodes, each of the characters pursues their freedom and the novel becomes a mirror for the broader social upheaval of the time.

And resident literary expert, Professor Richard Beard, turns his keen eye to time in fiction, in the first part of his new series looking at the processes of writing.

Elizabeth is also joined by Nadia Wassef who has written a memoir, Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller, about the journey of her ground breaking bookshop Diwan over twenty years. They're joined by Chrissie Ryan of Bookbar, which has become a thriving new bookshop despite opening at the height of lockdown. They discuss the power of bookshops as social spaces for communities of readers.

Book List – Sunday 23 January and Thursday 27 January

Free Love by Tessa Hadley
Everything Will Be Alright by Tessa Hadley
The Past by Tessa Hadley
The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
A Month in the Country by J.L.Carr
A Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef
Out of Egypt: A Memoir by André Aciman