Alex Clark talks to Australian novelist Steve Toltz about his new novel Quicksand, the story of an unlikely friendship between Liam a policeman, who also happens to be a writer, and Aldo, an unlucky man who spends some time in prison. The novel is full of one liners, aphorisms, jokes and word play and questions ideas about fate, luck and what it is to be an artist.

Also on the programme, the winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Jenny Erpenbeck discusses her novel The End of Days, a moving and bleak portrait of 20th century Germany seen through the many lives of one woman; Elizabeth Day and Tessa McWatt talk about writing about London and an editor shares her pick of June's new titles. Show less