It’s time for another special episode where we have another coffee conversation!
As ever with the coffee conversations, this is a real as it gets. Two microphones, two writers getting real about writing!
And this is a book that has a bit of everything.
It’s 1869. Tibet is a forbidden kingdom and closed to foreigners. Tibet is also an unwilling participant in what was called, ‘The Great Game’, a geopolitical rivalry, shall we call it, that didn’t escalate into a full-scale war, but it did see both Russia and the United Kingdom trying to expand their territories.
Deepa takes us on a sweeping journey back into history as she brings to life what was at stake for those explorers who, secretly, conceitedly, and ambitiously, crossed those borders.
But it's also a prescient exploration of boundaries and borders and a hymn to the complicated emotion of grief. And, as well all that, it’s an example of just really good storytelling.
Deepa Anappara is here to talk to me about THE LAST OF EARTH published by Oneworld Publications.
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Chapters
2.45 - Writing about the mountains
6.20 - Political dimensions of map-making
8.30 - inspiration from maps
12.15 - Characters and the captain
15.15 - Moby Dick and naming characters
21.45 - Rippling Pages Patreon
23.15 - Who is Catherine?
28.30 - Women, race, and getting into Tibet
31.15 - Guilt, death and grief
35.20 - Finding meaning in loneliness
37.30 - Deepa’s own grief
Reading List
Buy all the books here!: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/july-s-reads-2026?&new-list-page=true&bkshp-astro=t
Rudyard Kipling
T.S.Eliot
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Alexandra David-Néel
Deepa’s Books
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - (2020, Random House)
Letters to a Writer of Color: An Anthology (2023, Vintage Books) - edited by Deepa Anappara, Taymour Soomro, and Madeleine Thien
