Click on the links below to hear the authors reading:

1. Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America “I had no doubt that something cruel and catastrophic had happened before I was even born…”

2.  Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America. Parrot in the Tombs

3. Jonatham Lethem: Chronic City “Richard Abneg came in enraged about eagles. He liked to come in enraged about something…”

4.  Jonatham Lethem: Chronic City. Chase Insteadman introduces himself.

5. Jonatham Lethem: Chronic City “Then came the weird pervasive chocolate smell that floated like a cloud over Manhattan…”

Interview extracts

Three questions for Jonathan Lethem

1. Chronic City is set in Manhattan. What feelings towards the city did you have when you were growing up in Brooklyn?

2. Downtown Manhattan is swathed in a dark gray fog for much of the book. Is this a metaphor for 9/11?

3. You’re known for your interest in comic books, movies, pop culture and new media. So what keeps you coming back to the traditional form of the novel to express your ideas?

Three questions for Peter Carey

1. Olivier and Parrot in America is set in the early nineteenth century, but was it inspired by more contemporary concerns about the direction of American democracy?

2. Olivier Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur is a young French aristocrat whose parents have survived the Terror. How has his background shaped him?

3. And what about Parrot, the son of an English typesetter – what sort of man is he?

For the complete interview with Jonathan Lethem, click here.

For the complete interview with Peter Carey, click here.

For the Faber podcast for February 2010, click here.