interestingly, though, like eyes wide shut, it's adapted from a work by arthur schnitzler. yeah.it is? yes. i mean, if there is such things as coincidences. or it was meant to be. but, yeah, isn't that crazy? but it was, yeah. when sam said to me and patrick... sam mendes? yeah, yeah. sam mendes was like, "oh...". i'm like, "hold on. that's just totally weird. "la ronde? what? what" but what was so just enthralling about that was that sam believed i could play the five different characters. and that was like, you know, as an actor, i was like, "oh, wow, play all of them? ok, that's kind of exciting. on stage? wow. yeah." i look back on that and i think... and i wasn't that scared. i didn't have stage fright to the degree that i had it when i did photograph 51, which i've now learned a lot of actors get the stage fright, it becomes more intense as you get older, so i'm one of those people. it was in a very small london theatre, a two—hander with iain glen, and a really exposing role both physically and emotionally. did it feel like a risk? it felt like an amazing chance. it felt l

eyes wide shut was a psychological thriller, based on a 1926 novella by arthur schnitzler.cruise as a wealthy manhattan couple in a story about sex and infidelity and power and murder. why did you want to take on the role? why not? laughs i remember the emails - faxes actually at that time - - that were going back and forth, and it was like, "stanley kubrick is going to cast us in his film?" it was all so secretive and it was like going into this...other world. we didn't know we were going to be there for years. but i have always said, how great! i mean, i honestly would have shot that thing for five years. i didn't care. i'm with the greatest film—maker, i'm with my husband, i've got my kids there, and we're working. wow! that's as good as it gets. we're not working on trash, we're working on extraordinary material. who cares how long it takes? so you became personally close to him as well? yeah, and deeply enamoured with him — and he is a professor, it was like, i'd sit on the floor of his office and read books, and he had books everywhere and it was a mess, and he had a

start has also translated works by franz kafka, stefan zweig arthur schnitzler and others into english in particular. he made a selection and translation of kafka's best short stories titled the unhappiness of being a single man. start born in the northeast of scotland. he has lived in italy where he worked the santa maddalena literary foundation in germany. he now lives in london with his family. alex is the 2021 dayton literary peace prize winner in fiction. we germans please alexander starritt. good evening everybody and. congratulations to honorÉe fanonne jeffers for winning year's fiction prize for her novel. the love songs of w.e.b. dubois and in some, i felt a little nervous about what i was going to say about this book because it's, you know, i am a foreigner. ultimately, even though i do speak some american and honorÉ is novel to me, reads as a new origin story for america, for who haven't read it already. it begins in the 18th century with the first big elements in the melting indigenous people. a young black whose mother was brought from africa in chains, and a young scotsma