The Literary City
EXPLOCITY PODCASTS presents THE LITERARY CITY With Ramjee Chandran. This literary podcast is devoted to books and authors. It features interviews with a stellar line up of authors, both world famous and also authors who are being discovered—the only criterion being the quality of the prose. Topics are generally literary and include history, biographies, literature and literary fiction. The Literary City podcasts celebrates authors, poets, playwrights, grammar police, literary lounge lizards...and, oh yes, a cunning linguist or ten.
Episodes
79 episodes
Discovering The Lost Glory Of India With William Dalrymple And The Golden Road
We Indians often wear our heritage with pride, but how much of it do we truly understand?William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Golden Road, charts the extraordinary journey of Indian ideas, knowledge, art, and religion as they s...
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Season 4
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Episode 78
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45:48
108 Reasons To Love Art and Alka Pande - A Conversation With Kamini Sawhney
This special edition of The Literary City is a conversation about the transformative power of the arts—particularly the visual arts. Often misunderstood or overlooked, the arts hold the potential to nourish the mind and soul, offering cultural ...
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Season 4
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Episode 77
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48:06
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Anirudh Kanisetti And His Conquest Of The Mediaeval Deccan
As writers, we know that how we say something matters as much as what we say. The right words, arranged with care, can influence thought and stir emotion—or so we hope.The divide between creative prose and academic jarg...
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Season 4
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Episode 76
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35:08
Malcolm Gladwell And The Revenge Of The Tipping Point
Much of what we understand about global trends is filtered through the lens of the United States. What happens there often shapes thought, culture, and society worldwide. And when it comes to shaping thought, few have had the impact of my guest...
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Season 4
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Episode 75
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43:57
Celestial by Abhay K And 10 Indian Languages by Karthik Venkatesh
In this episode of The Literary City, we embark on a journey with two distinguished guests—each bringing a unique perspective to our exploration of literature and language.Abhay K, a poet-diplomat, and the author of "Celestial," a poeti...
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Season 4
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Episode 74
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43:43
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The Literary Life Of Ramachandra Guha
My guest today is a titan of Indian history, Ramachandra Guha.He is known for his monumental works on Gandhi and Indian history, but today we're taking a detour into the realm of literature.We'll be diving into his latest book, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 73
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47:47
The Lighthouse Family: A Compelling Novel From The Turkish Ambassador
My guest today, is an author from Turkiye, Firat Sunel. He is a career diplomat. He is currently the Turkish Ambassador to India.Firat is a demonstrably fascinating novelist. His latest novel, “The Lighthouse Family”, is a wonderful exa...
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Season 4
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Episode 72
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41:24
Churchill And India Fighting Retreat With Historian Walter Reid
You know how some people just seem to have that star quality? Winston Churchill, he was one of those. No matter how many books, documentaries you may have imbibed—or, speaking of imbibed, tales you may have heard of his brandy-infused mornings,...
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Season 3
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Episode 71
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43:48
A Disquiet In The Queen Of All Nations With Abhijit Sengupta
In what is meant to be his quiet and reflective corridor of retirement, my guest today, Abhijit Sengupta grapples with a disquiet that lingers. A former senior IAS officer and therefore, you might say, a custodian of order and democracy, a life...
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Season 3
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Episode 70
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40:39
The Secret Of More With Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
The essence of historical fiction is telling stories set in a particular period of time. They transport us to a different place, offering insights into the past while exploring themes that are relatable across generations.In the craft o...
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Season 3
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Episode 69
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33:42
Mani Shankar Aiyar And The Memoirs Of A Very Literary Maverick
My guest today is the remarkable Mani Shankar Aiyar. If you haven’t heard of him, let’s simply admit that you’ve been living under a rock.If you've been anywhere near the worlds of diplomacy, politics, or literature, you will know of hi...
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Season 3
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Episode 68
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52:59
The Art Of The Thriller And The American Boyfriend With Ivy Ngeow
In an essay, published in a 1964 edition of The Times Literary Supplement, V S Naipaul wrote:"The language was ours, to use as we pleased. The literature that came with it was therefore of peculiar authority, but this literature was lik...
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Season 3
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Episode 67
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39:37
What Happens When The Big Man Passes On? After Messiah With Aakar Patel
Most of us do not colour code our threat levels. But nations do.Following 9/11, the Homeland Security Advisory System in America in 2002 came up with the warning system that we all know and love today in our TV shows—green, blue, yellow...
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Season 3
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Episode 66
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50:23
Reason And Hope In A Dark Time With History's Angel And Anjum Hasan
Good literature can help us navigate our own emotions and motivations, and it helps us see the world through the eyes of the writer. The best literature touches our hearts and our minds. It triggers our emotions, and makes us think critically a...
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Season 3
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Episode 65
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45:20
Prof Ganesh Devy - The Man Who Discovered Over 700 Languages In India
As a curious and casual reader of linguistics, one of the first things I learned is that there is no monolithic object called a single language. Languages are like a living organism, they grow and sometimes they are said to die, and sometimes, ...
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Season 3
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Episode 64
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49:09
Tree And Serpent With John Guy Curator At The Met In New York
As part of Siddhartha’s awakening, he became aware of a spiritual energy in nature where trees had souls, birds had wisdom, and flowers bloomed no matter what the season. And snakes had the power of protection. And then there was all manner of ...
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Season 3
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Episode 63
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38:14
Ahmed Naji Discovers Literature In An Egyptian Prison - The Story In Rotten Evidence
Today I‘m excited to be speaking with Ahmed Naji, a writer who spent two years in prison in Egypt for writing what the authorities judged to be objectionable material.But while Ahmed Naji was in prison, he discovered literature and thro...
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Season 3
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Episode 62
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43:38
Centres Of Power - In The Den With Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi And Chinmay Gharekhan
Why were the 1980s pivotal in so many respects? Think the giddy days of glasnost and perestroika, the end of the cold war—of the whole Soviet Union in fact, liberalisation and globalisation, GATT and open borders, the assassination of Indira Ga...
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Season 3
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Episode 61
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40:18
With Tenzin Dickie And The Defiance Of Tibetan Literature In The Bardo
A few weeks ago, I was reading LitHub, one of the many literary magazines I enjoy greatly, and I found an essay that caught my immediate fancy. It is titled, “Literature in the Bardo: Tenzin Dickie on the Past, Present, and Future of the Tibeta...
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Season 3
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Episode 60
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35:54
Godfrey Pereira And The Insane Story Of An English Smuggler In Bombay
This is the incredible but true story of an Englishman—a dockworker in Bombay in the 1940s, who became a smuggler around the time of Independence.Not far offshore from the Ferry Wharf in Mumbai is a small island. It’s only some 100 metr...
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Season 3
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Episode 59
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36:50
A Tumbleweed In Shakespeare & Company - Jeremy Mercer
When George Whitman, in 1951, established a bookstore he wanted it to be more than a literary sanctuary for book lovers. He turned it into a sanctuary for writers seeking inspiration.The bookshop — as any devotee of books or, really, an...
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Season 3
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Episode 58
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41:22
Aamina Ahmad And The Return Of Faraz Ali
Authors have for a long time used literary expressions of anguish as a powerful tool to connect with readers. They may use language and symbolic references to nuance the emotions associated with it, but whatever their approach, they look to ins...
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Season 3
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Episode 57
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37:00
John Keane And The Shortest History Of Democracy
There are many who believe that the cradle of democracy was Greece. But if anything, Greece may lay claim to the etymology of the word democracy, but not to democracy itself. Whence then?The short answer by many historians is that the f...
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Season 3
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Episode 56
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40:38
The Insatiable Feminism Of The Fabulous Shobhaa De
That was my guest today, the incomparable Shobhaa De.Shobhaa is one of the most famous writers in India and her reputation has travelled everywhere, but it behooves me to talk about the realpolitik of Shobhaa De’s literature.Let...
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Season 3
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Episode 55
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39:12
Nilanjana Roy And The Literature Of The Black River
Nilanjana Roy is the girl who, as a child, ate books — in fact, she was known to have devoured them whole. This is obviously a reference to her book The Girl Who Ate Books, a paean to writing, writers and other such pursuit.Nilanjana is...
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Season 3
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Episode 54
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34:41
