In this special edition of the Faber podcast George Miller talks to Steve Sem-Sandberg, the author of the international bestseller, The Emperor of Lies.Steve was born in Oslo and, after a journalistic career spent mainly in central and eastern Europe, now lives in Vienna.

The author of several previous novels, Steve has achieved international acclaim for his detailed, vivid and profoundly affecting portrait of the ghetto in the Polish city of Lodz in Emperor of Lies. Sebastian Barry called the book ‘monumental’; Carmen Callil compared his achievement in bringing a whole society to life to Dickens.

No less a historical novelist than Hilary Mantel said of it: ‘Fiction here is operating at its best, to close the gap between past and present, between them and us: not through sentiment but through real understanding… I find it difficult to think of any book that has had such an immediate and profound impact on me.’

As you’ll hear, Steve Sem Sandberg has drawn on these chronicles in order to reimagine the ghetto, even today still haunted by ghosts, and shine light on the nature of evil manifested in one particularly dark time and place.

Click here to listen to the interview.

For revised version, click here .