John Wilson
speaker
3,430 appearances
25 recordings
9 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 4d ago
John Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 25 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 8.
Appearances
And welcome back to London, where in 2017 you won the Booker Prize, of course, for your debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.
How big a surprise on the night was that win?
For many people, that Booker win was their introduction to you as a writer.
It was your debut novel at the age, I think, of 58.
But of course, you had been winning so much acclaim and prizes for your short stories for many years.
Did the idea of Lincoln in the Bardo start off as the possible next short story?
And at what point did you think, actually, no, this has to be a novel?
How did you come across the story?
So we should just explain this point for those people who haven't read Lincoln in the Bardo.
The Lincoln in the title is not...
Abraham Lincoln, but his son, Willie, the 11-year-old son who has died and is visited in the tomb by his grieving father.
And the Bardo is a Buddhist concept of a limbo state between life and death.
Interesting you say it could have been a play, because actually there is a play-like aspect to it in the way it's experimental.
Lincoln's visits to the tomb are witnessed by this vast cast of ghostly spectral characters, and then interspersed also with quotes from supposed historical records.
Were any of those records real?
And that sort of very staccato form, which is almost like a play script, that answers the question, why that form then?
Yes, it kind of grew out of the play.
He was not sobbing.
And what about the environment, the bardo itself?
And Willie Lincoln is the one.
Showing 2921–2940 of 3,430 · page 147 of 172
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