Shakespeare and Company, Paris, is one of the world’s most iconic and beautiful bookshops. Located on the banks of the Seine, opposite Notre-Dame, it’s long been a meeting place for anglophone writers and readers.

In that tradition, determined for the bookshop to remain a place of meaningful and transformative conversation, owner Sylvia Whitman and novelist and literary director Adam Biles have hosted several hundred interviews with writers, ranging from prize-winning novelists to visionary non-fiction writers.

The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews is a selection of the best of these interviews from the last decade. Packed with warmth, sensitivity and humour, it’s a celebration of the greatest writers of our age and an insight into the lives and thoughts behind some of today’s most talked-about books.

Reviews of The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews

"This handsome hardback comprises a series of interviews with authors that took place on the shopfloor over the past decade or so" ― Times Literary Supplement

"A tantalising glimpse into the thoughts of some of our most vital writers . . . This is a refreshing approach to a text that, in other hands, could have felt stuffy and inaccessible" ― Arts Desk

"A collection of talks with an impressive range of writers that celebrates its heritage as a focus of cultural conversation . . . Thanks to this collection, you can settle into a corner of Shakespeare and Company even if you can't make it to Paris" ― Harper's Bazaar

"Biles is a skilled interviewer, soliciting reflections that shed light on how successful authors approach their craft and think about the world. The result is an illuminating glimpse inside the minds of writers" ― Publisher's Weekly

Adam Biles

Adam Biles is an English writer and translator based in Paris. He is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company, from where he hosts their weekly podcast. In 2022, he conceived and presented Friends of Shakespeare and Company read Ulysses—an epic, polyphonic celebration of James Joyce’s masterwork. Feeding Time, his first novel, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2016, and was chosen by The Guardian as a Fiction Pick for 2016 and was a book of the year for The Observer, The Irish Times, The Millions and 3:AM Magazine. It was published by Editions Grasset in France in 2018 to great critical acclaim. His second novel, Beasts of England, will be published in September 2023 by Galley Beggar Press, and in 2025 by Editions Grasset. It was selected as a “2023 highlight” by The Guardian. A collection of his conversations with writers, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews, will be published by Canongate in October 2023.

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