Lionel Shriver in Conversation

With Carlo Gébler

Lionel Shriver is an award-winning American author and journalist who always has her finger on society’s pulse and is never afraid to deal with the big issues of the day through her writing.

Born Margaret Ann, Shriver changed her name to Lionel at the age of 15 and she has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok, and Belfast. Her journalistic work includes contributions to the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Economist, the Guardian, and the Spectator. Her first novel, The Female of the Species, was published in 1987 and it was followed by another six novels before her rise to the fame with We Need to Talk About Kevin (2003) which won the Orange Prize in 2005. It was adapted as a film in 2011, starring Tilda Swinton.

In Shriver’s new novel, Mania, she turns her piercing gaze on the policing of opinion and intellect and imagines a world in which intellectual meritocracy is heresy. Hilarious, deadpan, scathing, and at times frighteningly plausible, Mania is a delight for the fans of her fiction and journalism alike.

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