'Checkout 19' explores the magic of escaping ...

Today’s episode features memoirs by two men whose incarceration became international headlines. Evan Gershkovich is an American journalist who spent 16 months in a Russian prison. Two years after his release, his new memoir This Cursed Beautiful Land details the time he spent lis ...  Show more

In American Pope: Leo XIV’s Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City, NPR host Scott Detrow and religion editor Daniel Burke chronicle Pope Leo XIV’s path to leading the Catholic Church as the first American to take the position in its 2,000 year history. Reported acro ...  Show more

Claire-Louise Bennett’s debut, Pond (Fitzcarraldo), has been a firm bookshop favourite since its release, for its unique, irreverent voice and attention to the parts of experience which go overlooked or unspoken. Checkout 19 (Jonathan Cape), the follow-up, is one of our most eage ...  Show more

Even though reading is a solitary activity, you’re never truly alone as a reader. You’re never the only reader who prefers dog-eared pages to bookmarks or the only reader who reads the last page first. Today’s guest used to feel self-conscious about her affection for stories that ...  Show more

Claire-Louise Bennett joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Family Walls,” by Maeve Brennan, which was published in The New Yorker in 1973. Bennett has published two books of fiction, “Pond” and “Checkout 19.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho ...  Show more