Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: Sarah Perry

Sarah Perry

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Sarah Perry

In a conversation with Mathew Sweet, the gothic author explores writing past and present.

Her most recent novel reframed the 1820 book Melmoth the Wanderer with a female lead and her atmospheric Essex Serpent explored Victorian superstition. How do our times feel?

Matthew Sweet talks to author Sarah Perry about her gothic imagination, writing about religion, rationalism and disease in novels including The Essex Serpent,  After Me Comes The Flood and Melmoth. Recorded from her home in Norwich, Sarah discusses  her experience of these times as someone who has an auto-immune condition her interest in comets and the way she used sewing to overcome a temporary inability to write. 

You can hear more from authors in the Norfolk area on the website of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival https://nnfestival.org.uk/ 

There is a collection of in depth interviews with guests including Zadie Smith, Mark Haddon, Sebastian Faulks, Marilynne Robinson and other authors on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8 

Sarah Perry can be found discussing her novel Melmoth in detail in this episode of Free Thinking called Sarah Perry, Spookiness and Fear https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000kk2 
and she discusses the Essex Serpent in this episode Still Loving Victoriana Jokes and All https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b081tkr7


Producer: Robyn Read
Image credit: Jacek Kordus

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