In the debut episode of Editions, a podcast from Shakespeare and Company and Faber, literary director Adam Biles and Faber Editions curator Ella Griffiths are joined by novelist and performer Taìno Mendez to discuss Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke, the twentieth title in the Faber Editions imprint.

Published in 1965 and long out of print, the novel follows Oliver, a Black teenager spending a final summer before college in the eccentric Michigan household of his wealthy patron Etta Klein and his aunt Harriet. Witty, camp, and shot through with tragedy, it defies easy categorisation; a drawing-room satire, a coming-of-age story, and a quietly radical work of civil rights era fiction.

The conversation covers the novel's Wildean wit, its oblique engagement with race and queerness, the role of photographer Carl Van Vechten in the Harlem Renaissance, and what it means to write against expectation.

Buy Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes

UK: https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571391783-ladies-of-the-rachmaninoff-eyes-faber-editions/

Rest of World: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/ladies-of-the-rachmaninoff-eyes-faber-editions

Buy Rainbow Milk: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/rainbow-milk

Sign up to Faber’s Heritage Subscription, featuring all Faber Editions titles: Subscribers get a book in the post each month for just £9 alongside a curated email with exclusive extra content about the book and its author.

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Books & Authors Discussed

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze — William Saroyan (foreword by Stephen Fry)

Mrs Caliban — Rachel Ingalls

Palace of the Peacock — Wilson Harris

Omeros — Derek Walcott

The Flower Beneath the Foot — Ronald Firbank

Sorrow in Sunlight (retitled Prancing N-) — Ronald Firbank

Go Tell It on the Mountain — James Baldwin

Giovanni's Room — James Baldwin

Another Country — James Baldwin

À rebours (Against Nature) — Joris-Karl Huysmans

En rade (Stranded) — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Checkout 19 — Claire-Louise Bennett

Rainbow Milk — Taìno Mendez

Ulysses — James Joyce

Works by Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brigid Brophy and Iris Murdoch also mentioned

Illusions— Ruth Lehmann (upcoming Faber Editions title, discussed with Megan Nolan on our next podcast episode)

Films/TV Shows Discussed

Get Out — dir. Jordan Peele

Lovers Rock — dir. Steve McQueen

The Defiant Ones — starring Sidney Poitier

Playtime — dir. Jacques Tati

Severance

Bios

Taíno Mendez is a novelist based in the southern English town of Margate. Their first novel, Rainbow Milk, was an Observer Top Ten Best Debuts choice for 2020 and widely named as one of the best novels of the year, being shortlisted for a British Book Award and for the Jhalak Prize, Polari Prize and Gordon Burn Prize. Their non-fiction has been published in a variety of outlets including the WritersMosaic, the London Review of Books, Esquire, the Guardian and British Vogue. They are currently working on their second novel.

Ella Griffiths is Faber's Head of Classics & Heritage

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company

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Editions - Episode 1 - Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes with Taìno Mendez

The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Editions - Episode 1 - Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes with Taìno Mendez