ON THE POD THIS MONTH

OUT Now

On Un/CERTAINTY

NATASHA LENNARD

Apparently these are uncertain times and yet we’re surrounded by new certainties. Things that only a few years ago would have seemed ridiculous are now the fabric of our lives. The inevitability of AI, the ever rightward trajectory of our politics and the collapse of international law are all foregone conclusions. You are, at best, naive if you questions any of these things - but that is exactly what Natasha Lennard asks us to do in her new book On Un/certainty. 

Drawing on the late work of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as a cast of contemporary essayists, journalists and thinkers, Natasha asks us to reconsider what assumptions these certainties hinge on. How doubt can be marshalled in our dangerous age and whether the violent realities, brought about by these entrenched conceptions, are inevitable at all. 

“An invitation to rethink what we know, and how we know it. Lennard challenges conventional understandings of crisis, borders and gender, revealing how deeply entrenched certainties shape our perceptions of the world.”

Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger

“Amidst inflationary talk of uncertainty and crisis, Lennard makes a bracing case, instead, for the critique of pernicious certainties. A brilliant provocation to further thought. A hinge book.”

Adam Tooze, author of Shutdown

UPCOMING

HOW TO MAKE A WOMAN

MARIE DARRIEUSSECQ (Available from Friday November 13th.)

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in the Basque region of France in the 1980s. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different footing: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, moves to Bordeaux to study psychology and remains committed to her childhood sweetheart, Christian; rebellious Solange shakes off her old connections and moves from Bordeaux to Paris to London in pursuit of a life on the stage. In How to Make a Woman, we follow the young women’s experiences of adolescence, love, sex, work and motherhood, as they negotiate their places in the world and find their own versions of fulfilment. Written with humour and heart, Marie Darrieussecq’s latest novel is an electrifying, sometimes brutal portrait of female friendship and of two identities under construction, by ‘one of the most original voices in contemporary French literature’ (Times Literary Supplement).

“Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.”
Samantha Harvey, Guardian

“How to Make a Woman is a glorious exploration of the transient identities of youth and the complicated nature of friendship; the condition of loving and loathing a person both at once.”
Sara Baume, Irish Times