Three Percent Podcast

On this episode, Vince Francone (A Book No One Wants, Jabber) and Chad W. Post discuss Brian Dillon’s forthcoming book, Ambivalence: An Education (NYRB/Fitzcarraldo) as part of their ongoing series of podcasts on Irish literature. (You can find earlier episodes in this series here.) They discuss how Dillon’s book hovers between memoir and criticism, and how that passion for literature was fostered within academia, then turn to the realities of 2026 and a few pieces by The Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch, especially “The End of Reading Is Here.”
Also mentioned in this podcast: Chad’s piece on an earlier article of Horowitch’s, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” and the start of Vince’s serialized book, Compendium of Eccentrics.
This episode’s music is “Libraries” by Yellow Ostrich.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcast, the Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) for sustained, multi-week discussions centered around complicated, long books.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, Daniel Hahn OBE joins Chad to talk about his new book, If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. They discuss how the book foregrounds the roles creativity and interpretation play in translation, what a good companion piece it is to Hahn’s Catching Fire: A Translator’s Diary, the ways this book may bring people to both translation and Shakespeare, and the state of the field as a whole.
This episode’s music is “Kate’s Theme” by Kloyd.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

On this episode, special guest Aryan Omar Hassan talks about Henar Press and their first publications: Gābor by Seyed Qader Hedayati, translated from the Kurdish by Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo; I Am Going to Kill Somebody by Firat Ceweri, translated from the Kurdish by Jeannette Okur; and Who’s Afraid of Kurdistan?: An Anthology of Contemporary Plays, edited by Aryan himself. He also discusses the Kurdish Literary Database he built and maintains, along with discussing the element of suppression (of language, of the people) in Kurdish literature and some other common tropes, and makes a number of recommendations.
This episode’s music is “Damascus” by Gorillaz.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

Arunava Sinha—professor, journalist, translator of over 100 works, including The Laboratory by Rabindranath Tagore—discusses his new venture, Chowringhee Press, his career in translation, the literary scene in India writ large, and provides a list of books to check out if you’re looking for entryways into South Asia’s diverse literary scene (see below).
Books published by Chowringhee Press:
I Murdered Mine, Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, translated from the Hindi by Sakshi Agarwal
Premchand X Ray + Sen, Munshi Premchand aka Dhanpat Rai Shrivastava, translated from the Hindi by Sayari Debnath
Writing Death—Ego: A Novel, Rajalekshmi, translated from the Malayalam by Dhiya Sony
The Laboratory, Rabindranath Tagore, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Finalists for the JCB Prize for Literature:
Jasmine Days, Benyamin, translated from the Malayalam by Shahnaz Habib
The One Legged, Sakyajit Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee
Imaan, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha
The Nemesis, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by V. Ramaswamy
There’s Gunpowder in the Air, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Moustache, S. Hareesh, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
Anti-Clock, V.J. James, translated from the Malayalam by Ministhy S.
The Paradise of Food, Khalid Jawed, translated from the Urdu by Baran Farooqi
Song of the Soil, Chuden Kabimo, translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral
Sanatan, Sharankumar Limable, translated from the Marathi (via Hindi) by Paromita Sengupta
Maria, Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
Delhi: A Soliloquy, M. Mukundan, translated from the Malayalam by Fathima E.V. & Nandakumar K.
Fire Bird, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Janani Kannan
A Lonely Harvest‌, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
The Story of a Goat, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by N. Kalyan Raman
Trial by Silence‌, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
I Named My Sister Silence, Manoj Rupda, translated from the Hindi by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell (also featured on the Two Month Review)
Valli, Sheela Tomy, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
This episode’s music is “Looking for a Ghazal” by Sarathy Korwar.
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com

Jeffrey Angles (translator of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again and many non-Kaiju related titles) joins Chad and special guest Joanne Bernardi (Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, Provenance and Early Cinema (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema (ed.), and the multimedia resource, ReEnvisioning Japan) to talk about the recent release of The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’ichiro Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta, recently released by University of Minnesota Press. They discuss how this project came about, the relationship between the books and the films, the political ideas evident in Mothra, the gender of Godzilla and Mothra in the original texts, and how Mothra is related to Doctor Doolittle. A very interesting, lively conversation about “monster studies,” translation, and cultural representation from two experts, who are also big Godzilla-verse fans!
This episode’s music is “Mothra’s Song.”
You can subscribe to the Three Percent Podcast at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And be sure to follow our sister podcasts: Two Month Review (Apple, Spotify) and Mining the Dalkey Archive (Apple, Spotify) for more book and industry talk!


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threepercentproblem.substack.com