Behind the Book

Featured authors

The writers who sat down with us

Award-winning novelists, working poets and the agents and editors who shape their books — each with the episodes where they open up the process.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Novelist & essayist

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half of a Yellow Sun · Americanah · Purple Hibiscus

Nigeria · AfricaLiterary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Short Stories · Essays & Criticism

  • Women's Prize for Fiction, 2007
  • Women's Prize 'Winner of Winners', 2020
  • MacArthur Fellowship, 2008

Born in Enugu and raised on the University of Nigeria campus in Nsukka, Adichie left medicine for literature and published Purple Hibiscus at twenty-six. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, took four years and a discarded narrator, and remains the book she is asked about most. She divides her time between Lagos and the United States and runs an annual writing workshop in Nigeria.

3D mock-up of the book cover for Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun · Fourth Estate, 2006

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Kazuo Ishiguro

Novelist, Nobel laureate

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day · Never Let Me Go · Klara and the Sun

United Kingdom · EuropeLiterary Fiction · Speculative Fiction · Science Fiction · Historical Fiction

  • Nobel Prize in Literature, 2017
  • Booker Prize, 1989
  • Knighted for services to literature, 2019

Born in Nagasaki and raised in Surrey from the age of five, Ishiguro wanted to be a musician before he was a novelist, and still writes lyrics. He is famous for writing The Remains of the Day in a four-week 'crash' after years of false starts — a method he defends as a way of holding an entire book in his head at once.

3D mock-up of the book cover for The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day · Faber & Faber, 1989

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Margaret Atwood

Novelist & poet

Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin · The Handmaid's Tale · Alias Grace

Canada · North AmericaDystopian Fiction · Speculative Fiction · Poetry · Literary Fiction

  • Booker Prize, 2000
  • Booker Prize, 2019
  • Arthur C. Clarke Award, 1987

Atwood has published more than fifty books across six decades — fiction, poetry, essays and graphic novels — and still begins in longhand in the morning. She grew up partly in the bush of northern Quebec, an upbringing she credits for both her practicality and her interest in what people do when systems fail.

3D mock-up of the book cover for The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin · McClelland & Stewart, 2000

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Colson Whitehead

Novelist

Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad · The Nickel Boys · Harlem Shuffle

United States · North AmericaHistorical Fiction · Literary Fiction · Satire · Crime & Noir

  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2017
  • National Book Award, 2016
  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2020

A New Yorker who began as a television critic at The Village Voice, Whitehead sat on the premise of The Underground Railroad for sixteen years because he didn't believe he was ready to write it. He is one of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice.

3D mock-up of the book cover for The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railroad · Doubleday, 2016

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Olga Tokarczuk

Novelist, Nobel laureate

Olga Tokarczuk

Flights · Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead · The Books of Jacob

Poland · EuropeLiterary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Translated Fiction · Philosophical Fiction

  • Nobel Prize in Literature, 2018
  • International Booker Prize, 2018
  • Nike Award (twice)

A trained psychologist from Sulechów, Poland, Tokarczuk writes what she calls the 'constellation novel' — books built from fragments the reader assembles. Her work has been fiercely debated at home and celebrated abroad, and her Nobel citation praised an imagination that 'represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life'.

3D mock-up of the book cover for Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
Flights · Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2007

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Bernardine Evaristo

Novelist & professor

Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other · Mr Loverman · Manifesto

United Kingdom · EuropeLiterary Fiction · Verse Novel · Memoir · Poetry

  • Booker Prize, 2019
  • British Book Awards Author of the Year, 2020
  • OBE for services to literature

Evaristo co-founded Britain's first Black women's theatre company in 1982 and published eight books before Girl, Woman, Other made her the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize, at sixty. She calls her form 'fusion fiction' and has spent decades campaigning for writers of colour in British publishing.

3D mock-up of the book cover for Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other · Hamish Hamilton, 2019

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Ocean Vuong

Poet & novelist

Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Night Sky with Exit Wounds · Time Is a Mother

United States · North AmericaPoetry · Autofiction · Literary Fiction

  • MacArthur Fellowship, 2019
  • T.S. Eliot Prize, 2017
  • American Book Award, 2020

Born on a rice farm outside Saigon and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Vuong came to fiction from poetry and writes at a famously slow pace — sometimes a handful of words in a morning. His debut novel is addressed to a mother who could not read it, a gap he treats as the engine of the book rather than its obstacle.

3D mock-up of the book cover for On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous · Penguin Press, 2019

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Min Jin Lee

Novelist

Min Jin Lee

Pachinko · Free Food for Millionaires

United States · AsiaHistorical Fiction · Family Saga · Literary Fiction

  • National Book Award finalist, 2017
  • New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017
  • Guggenheim Fellowship, 2018

Born in Seoul and raised in Queens, Lee trained as a lawyer before writing full time. She carried Pachinko for nearly thirty years, abandoning a completed draft in her forties after interviews in Tokyo convinced her the story belonged to the women of the family, not the men.

3D mock-up of the book cover for Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko · Grand Central, 2017

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