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It’s been a prolific year for The Golden Mole’s author, Katherine Rundell, who last month became the youngest ever winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for Super-Infinite, her biography of the Renaissance poet John Donne. She also published The Zebra’s Great Escape, one of many children’s books she’s written which include her award winning The Explorers and Rooftoppers. Katherine talks to Chris Power today about The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasures, a collection of impassioned essays on the world's endangered animals. Exploring how she blended art and science, poetry and natural history through writings from Pliny, Aristotle, TS Eliot, Hemingway, Russian fairy tales and Greek mythology to inspire her readers about the beauty of the natural world and the fragility of its existence. Katherine also shares her favourite fictonal stories about animals, including a reading from The Sheep Pig by Dick King-Smith.

Also exploring the fragility of our natural world, Chris talks to the Icelandic writer Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. Her latest novel Animal Life, translated by Brian FitzGibbon, blends themes of the natural and human worlds as surprisingly as The Golden Mole. It’s told through the eyes of Domhildur, a midwife who has just delivered her one thousand nine hundred and twenty-second baby in the days before Christmas as a deadly storm approaches the island. Domhildur's exploring her grand aunt's collection of philosophical essays, from the local history of midwifery to the encroaching impact of climate change, which circle around the delicate equilibrium of life. And looking ahead to the best books of next year, Mo Hafeez, editor at Faber and Faber, shares his enthusiasm for Kathryn Scanlan’s novel Kick the Latch, in bookshops from January.

Book List – Sunday 18 and Thursday 22 December

The Golden Mole by Katherine Rundell
Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
The Zebra’s Great Escape by Katherine Rundell
The Book of Hopes: Words and Pictures to Comfort, Inspire and Entertain edited by Katherine Rundell
The Sheep Pig by Dick King-Smith
Moon Pops by Baek Hee-Na
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (published in 2023)
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
Animal Life by Audur Ava Olafsdottir