The Unseen Book Club

The Unseen Book Club
  • 4.9 (17)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED MONTHLY

Anarchist novels, communist poetry, uncategorizable anticolonial texts, unapologetically utopian science fiction. Close readings of stories of collective resistance and research into their contexts. A search for narratives of "we" instead of "I," observing the becoming of political subjects. A conversation between two curious non-experts and the occasional guest. It's not necessary to read the books to enjoy the show, but they're worth reading for their own sake.

  1. 2D AGO

    Tuesday Or September Or The End by Hannah Black

    Hannah Black’s superb novella Tuesday Or September Or The End (Capricious, 2022) is a science-fictionalized account of 2020 and its twinned world-making events of the pandemic and riot. The novella is caustic, hilarious, and written with both an unflinching eye for this world’s stifling and tragic conditions and a wide-open heart for its undoing and rebirth. https://capriciousfoundation.org/publications/tuesday Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    39 min

  2. 11/08/2025

    On and Off-Screen Imaginaries with Tiffany Sia

    On and Off-Screen Imaginaries (Primary Information, 2024) is a collection of six essays by filmaker, artist and writer Tiffany Sia. Sia joins us to discuss how media depictions of political practice and identity are produced, negotiated, memorialized, and transformed through censorship, surveillance, diaspora, and time.  On and Off-Screen Imaginaries: https://primaryinformation.org/product/on-and-off-screen-imaginaries/ Tiffany Sia: https://www.tiffanysia.com/ HTHQ Workshop: https://hq.creativetime.org/calendar/sonic-literacy-with-tiffany-sia-and-jordan-lord/ Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    1h 28m

  3. 09/22/2025

    Full Circle: A Life In Rebellion, by Ben Morea + 1000 Voices Collective, w/ Ariel Uesseler and Sabu Kohso

    Ben Morea is primarily known for his central involvement with the print magazine Black Mask and the militant anarchist group Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker. Both were active in New York City in the late 1960’s. In the 1970’s, Morea went underground and lived for forty years in the Southern Rockies, immersing himself in ceremonial practice with indigenous communities. In the 2010’s, he returned to New York City. Full Circle is an autobiographical account of his political, artistic, and spiritual life, edited from a series of interviews with 1000 Voices Collective. We speak with Sabu Kohso and Ariel Uesseler about the process of creating Full Circle, and Morea’s fierce dedication to revolutionary living. Full Circle: A Life In Rebellion Our review of Full Circle will be appearing in print in the upcoming issue of Heatwave Magazine. Check out their first issue online. Sabu Kohso’s writings and translation about the Japanese ultra-left can be found here and here. Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    1h 22m

  4. 09/22/2025

    RELAUNCH: The Unseen Book Club returns!

    The Unseen Book Club returns! Max and Dan do some light bibliomancy, reflect on the past and cast our gazes to the horizon and discuss the future of the show. Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    17 min

  5. 12/30/2023

    Event Factory by Renee Gladman

    Event Factory is the first in a cycle of novellas by Renee Gladman. An unnamed linguist-traveler arrives in the city-state of Ravicka, whose inhabitants speak a uniquely place-based, relational, and physically gestural language. The narrator is on a quest for meaning, understanding, and connection, but everything, even the buildings themselves, evade her.  Gladman is especially interested in language, architecture, and meaning; Event Factory echos Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and Henri Lefabvre's work on the production of space.  We are joined by two friends, Sirin Cucek and Auden Kotz, to explore the ever-shifting  semiotic and physical landscape of Ravicka. We talk about the violence of premises, ontologies of architecture, crises without conflict, the sensory allure of salsa dancers, and the explicitly political content in this enigmatic and abstract novella.  Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    1h 17m

  6. 10/30/2023

    Publishing The Commune, w/ Mitch Anzuoni of Inpatient Press

    Mitch Anzuoni of Inpatient Press on discovering Marios Chakkas and finding a translator who would do justice to Chakkas’ unique voice. Review of The Commune in Jacobin Magazine Mikis Theodorakis' obituary in Monthly Review Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    29 min

  7. 10/27/2023

    The Commune by Marios Chakkas, w/ translator Chloe Tsolakoglou

    Marios Chakkas wrote The Commune in 1972 shortly before his death of cancer at the age of 41. Chakkas was a prolific Greek writer who lived through decades of hope, aspiration, repression and ultimately defeat for the country’s Left. A unique and unclassifiable novella, The Commune charts the state of Chakkas’ psyche through a dense sequence of memories, dreams, and imagined bureaucratic procedures. He reflects on his youth as communist militant during the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949, the nature of the self, individual and relational, coming to a profound and contradictory understanding of political belonging and collective memory. Having discarded the trappings and failures of political parties and society at large, he seeks communion with his fellow outcasts in his imagined eponymous commune: barely described, only gestured at. We speak with translator Chloe Tsolakoglou about 20th century Greek political history, theories of translation, texts that produce their own language of understanding, pathos and failure, and the ever-distant horizon of the commune. Inpatient Press: https://www.inpatientpress.net/ Chloe Tsolakoglou: https://fridaycowgirl.com/ Unseen Book Club Twitter: https://twitter.com/unseenbookclub Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unseenbookclub_podcast Art by Eli Liebman: https://elimack.weebly.com/ Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    1h 24m

  8. 09/05/2023

    Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

    Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo author and prominent figure in the first of wave of the Native American Renaissance, spent ten year crafting Almanac of the Dead, published in 1991. Almanac is a sprawling, prophetic, epic novel populated by coke smugglers, arms dealers, sex workers, homeless veterans, scheming businessmen, corrupt politicians, and the people worldwide whose dreams are troubled by the fallout of the spiritual death of European descendants, or touched by the hope, however violent and tenuous, of the re-ascent of indigenous and African gods in the Americas. Much of Almanac takes place in Chiapas, Mexico, the plains of Colombia, or Los Angeles, but the story centers around Tuscon, Arizona and Lecha, a TV psychic who has given up her career and returned to the ranch of her smuggler sister Zeta, to transcribe the Almamanc of the Dead, a centuries old palimpsest of stories, memories and observations given to her by her Yaqui grandmother. Meanwhile, the colonial border societies of Arizona and Chiapas careen towards their reckoning with the disaffected and the dispossessed. We are joined by friend and scholar E Ornelas to talk about non-linear time and ‘Native Slipstream,' the solidarity through the rejection or refusal of the racial order of colonial white supremacy, prophecy and political conjunctures, indigeneity and revolutionary politics, and are continuously astounded by Leslie Marmon Silko’s mastery of narrative craft. Check out E’s band, E.T. https://e-t-music.bandcamp.com/music Music of Crepusculo Negro can be heard here: https://crepusculonegro.bandcamp.com/ The lyrics accompanying the Vohlan/Blue Hummingbird on the Left split release are available on the Metal Archives https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Volahn/Debajo_del_s%C3%ADmbolo_del_Sol  Unseen Book Club Twitter: https://twitter.com/unseenbookclub Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unseenbookclub_podcast Art by Eli Liebman: https://elimack.weebly.com/ Sign up for our newsletter! Buzzsprout Instagram Music by Ex-Official Art by Eli Mack

    1h 40m
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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

Anarchist novels, communist poetry, uncategorizable anticolonial texts, unapologetically utopian science fiction. Close readings of stories of collective resistance and research into their contexts. A search for narratives of "we" instead of "I," observing the becoming of political subjects. A conversation between two curious non-experts and the occasional guest. It's not necessary to read the books to enjoy the show, but they're worth reading for their own sake.

Information

  • Creator
    The Unseen Book Club
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Unseen Book Club
  • Show Website
    The Unseen Book Club