Kate Sawyer Reads from The Stranding

Damian Barr’s Literary Salon tempts the world’s best writers to read exclusively from their latest greatest works and share their own personal stories. Star guests include Jojo Moyes, John Waters, Yaa Gyasi, Mary Beard, Diana Athill and Louis de Bernières—all in front of a live audience at leading glamorous locations world-wide. Our London home is the Savoy. Suave Salonnière Damian Barr is your host.

If you read one book this summer (although why would you read just one?!), you wouldn’t be going wrong by making it The Stranding by Kate Sawyer. In the words of Marian Keyes, it’s “GORGEOUS and original and captivating,” and we love the extract Kate generously shares with us in this podcast episode!

Ruth lives in the heart of London. Working, drinking, falling in love: the rhythm of her vivid and complicated life is set against a hum of darkening news reports from which she deliberately turns away. In the wake of a failed romance, she departs for New Zealand to fulfill her life dream of working with whales. But when Ruth arrives, disturbing world events catch up with her. Far from home and with no real hope of survival, she finds herself climbing into the mouth of a beached whale with a stranger to escape the carnage. When they emerge, it is to a landscape that bears no relation to the world they once knew. The Stranding is published by Coronet and available now!

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This podcast is produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman. To listen to the rest of the episode, as well as the whole archive of Damian Barr’s Literary Salon, subscribe and listen on iTunes or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.