Holly Pester & Nathalie Olah: The Lodgers

Living in a precarious sub-let and dreading the arrival of her landlord, a young woman’s thoughts keep straying back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new tenant she has never met, whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination. Holly Pester was in conversation with Nathalie Olah, who has described Pester’s debut novel The Lodgers as ‘a novel for the age, and for generation rent: a captivating and unforgettable account of how economic circumstance can lead to a feeling of being only half alive’.

Pester’s poetry collection Comic Timing, also published by Granta, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Nathalie Olah’s most recent book is Bad Taste (Dialogue Books, 2023).