Rippling Pages Live with Katharina Volckmer - Part 1 - on Call Centres, Intimacy and Toilet Humour

Katharina Volckmer is here to discuss her second novel, Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes (Indigo Press) and it was live at the Hyde Park Book Club! Thank you to the Hyde Park Book Club for hosting us and Next Chapter Books for supporting the event.

Katharina’s first novel, THE APPOINTMENT, was translated into over fifteen languages, it was adapted for the stage starring Camille Cottin and was nominated for several prizes. Katharina is in ribald mode in this funny, outlandish, and yet, very melancholic novel about a man called Jimmie who works in a call centre. Jimmie helps holiday makers.  He placates their fears about sharks in the waters of Mykonos, Greece, among many other strange and wonderful challenges.  He also manages a complicated relationship with his mother and has a traumatic memory of an electric carving knife that threatens to burst to the surface. The Irish writer, Colm Tóibín, said the book is ‘filled with brilliant dialogue, unexpected turns, some very dirty talk with sudden bursts of hilarity, and then fierce sadness.’

You can buy CALLS MAY BE RECORDED FOR TRAINING AND MONITORING PURPOSES from the Rippling Pages bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/ripplingpagespod

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Where to find Next Chapter Books:  https://www.nextchapterleeds.co.uk/ 

Rippling Points

05.07 - Katharina's tour of Leeds.

05.49 - What's Katharina's novel about?

08.11 - Jimmie's need for the toilet in the opening scenes!

10.28 - A reading from the novel.

14.07 - Life in a call centre.

16.42 - Experience of moving abroad

19.03 - Why people overshare

20.33 - Differences between this novel and Katharina's previous novel

24.14 - Intimacy and speaking to strangers

26.14 - The other side of anonymity

28.25 - Kafka

 

Reference Points

Franz Kafka

The Appointment - Katharina Volckmer