Our Struggle might be the “worst idea for a podcast ever conceived”, said John Phipps in The Spectator. In it, our two young American hosts, Lauren Teixeira and Drew Ohringer, discuss with their guests the Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, and his “six-book memoir-cum-novel-cum-lawsuit-magnet” My Struggle.
It sounds a bit niche, but this “hip and funny” podcast has become the “breakout hit of the year in transatlantic literary circles”. Much of Our Struggle’s appeal is that it “conducts its lengthy digressions” in a quintessentially Knausgaardian way: “with a genial unconcern for either the task at hand or what anyone might think about it”.
Indeed, at times these Knausgaard podcasters seem to want to talk about everything but Knausgaard – “cigarettes, Constance Garnett, the history of literary criticism, to what extent hotness is a function of tallness” – until the only territory left uncovered is “Knausgaard himself, described only through omission, in negative outline, raising yet another cigarette to his smouldering, craggy face”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It is “frankly unexpected” in these “hypersensitive” times to come across a show like Raj!, which appears to have as its touchstones the likes of The Far Pavilions, The Man Who Would Be King and Carry On Up the Khyber, said Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. This terrific comedy, by Meera Syal and Mark Evans, is set in “India’s deadliest province, West-by-Northwest-and-a-Tiny-Bit-East Punjab”.
Characters include the British governor Henry Snebworth, his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Scathingtongue, the province’s Maharajah Sunil and his murderous mother the Rajmata. The humour is “broad and tremendously silly”, with plenty of skewering of genre clichés. The pace is brisk, and there are lively performances, especially from Jennifer Saunders and Syal as the rival matriarchs. “Stick with it and it sweeps you along.”
The recent Radio 4 four-parter A Life in Music was a “delight”, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Presented by Jude Rogers, the series, available on BBC Sounds, is both a personal exploration of her own musical development, and an “intelligent and sensitive examination” – with input from musicians, neuroscientists, psychologists and others – of how music “helps us access the joys and disasters of who we are and where we fit into the world”.
Another recent Radio 4 highlight well worth seeking out is Adults, Almost, which explores the experience of lockdown for various 17- and 18-year-olds. “Lockdown was a relief… I had a GCSE Spanish oral I hadn’t revised for,” says one, Kezia, cheerfully. “Oh, they were so upbeat, even when they felt down; how lovely to hear such natural wit and delight in life.
The Week Unwrapped: Hazardous heat, nuclear fusion and divisive dieting
What does a Pakistani city hitting temperatures too hot for the human body tell us about climate change? Could a new nuclear project provide a breakthrough in clean energy? And is a ‘medieval’ dieting device really so controversial? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.
-
Blue Origin launches Mars probes in NASA debutSpeed Read The New Glenn rocket is carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission
-
Trump DOJ sues to block California redistrictingSpeed Read California’s new congressional map was drawn by Democrats to flip Republican-held House seats
-
GOP retreats from shutdown deal payout provisionSpeed Read Senators are distancing themselves from a controversial provision in the new government funding package
-
Train Dreams pulses with ‘awards season gravitas’The Week Recommends Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton star in this meditative period piece about a working man in a vanished America
-
Middleland: Rory Stewart’s essay collection is a ‘triumph’The Week Recommends The Rest is Politics co-host compiles his fortnightly columns written during his time as an MP
-
‘Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America’ and ‘Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary’feature The culture divide in small-town Ohio and how the internet usurped dictionaries
-
6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
-
Bugonia: ‘deranged, extreme and explosively enjoyable’Talking Point Yorgos Lanthimos’ film stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien
-
The Revolutionists: a ‘superb and monumental’ bookThe Week Recommends Jason Burke ‘epic’ account of the plane hijackings and kidnappings carried out by extremists in the 1970s
-
Film reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘The Mastermind’ and ‘Nouvelle Vague’feature A kidnapped CEO might only appear to be human, an amateurish art heist goes sideways, and Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ gets a lively homage
-
Book reviews: ‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ and ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’feature An examination of humanity in the face of “the Machine” and a posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who recently died by suicide
