Francis Spufford

And then there's a bonus for you too.

I'll be speaking with Francis Spufford, chair of the judges for the second Todayish Bodecky Prize, following its recent awards ceremony at the Polish Hearth Club in Kensington.

We'll hear all about the prize, the cultural figure in whose name it was set up, and the celebration of imaginative creative writing across all genres.

The Argentine poet and short story writer Jorge Luis Boyes once said, I've always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

It's not just a list of naughty little things that we can use to batter other people.

A few years ago, an author called Francis Spufford wrote what I think is the best definition of sin.

But before I show you, I do want to phrase it and frame it properly.

Too often the word sin has been misunderstood, maligned or belittled to become irrelevant.

I am sure I may get comments or emails about using this word on the screen in church.

But I do think his use of it does get at the heart of something in how the Bible understands sin that other words don't quite have the power.

So what does sin mean? According to the author Francis Spufford, it is this on the screen.

The human propensity to F things up.

So experiences can be interpreted i- in multiple ways, and what we usually do, I mean, I suppose it's inevitable, is when something happens to us, we bring our frame or our worldview and we try to figure it out, and if it doesn't fit our worldview, then we try to figure out how to dismiss it or ignore it so that it sort of goes away.

I remember reading an essay some years ago called Spiritual Literature for Atheists by Francis Spufford, and he talked about two cases, one of them that you discuss in your book involving the author Barbara Ehrenreich.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

It's what the Christian tradition can call sin.

And a writer, Francis Spufford, calls the universal human propensity to F things up.

A little bit easier to understand maybe than the jargon of sin.

In his excellent book, Unapologetic, Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense, he writes, it is the regular predictable failure of human empathy and wisdom visible in every morning's newspaper and every evening's self-examination.

It's the return of friend of the show, uh, writer and thinker Daniel McLoughlin, who joins us to explore some of the best political novels of the 21st century, and, uh, who is tonight discussing Red Plenty by Francis Spufford.

Uh, Daniel, welcome back to the show.

Welcome.

Okay.

Talk to you soon, Neil.

That is, uh, the writer and thinker Daniel McLoughlin there talking about Francis Spufford's novel, Red Plenty.