The Book That Refuses to End: Catherine Lacey on The Möbius Book

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup with a novella that spirals into the psychological suspense of a possible murder next door. As the narratives bend and mirror each other, Lacey explores the porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction, faith and doubt, intimacy and estrangement.The conversation dives deep into Lacey’s creative process, her early entanglement with religion, the disorienting legacy of male anger, and how the pandemic shaped her understanding of confinement and rupture. Candid and philosophical, Lacey reflects on memory’s distortions, the ethics of writing memoir, and the liberating act of leaving questions unanswered. Buy The Möbius Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-mobius-bookCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast.Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.Discover all our upcoming events here.If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here.Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Har Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O'Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein...and many, many more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.