Michael Nangla was the first of his family to be born in England. He always felt torn between the cultures of his motherland and the country he grew up in. Love and Other Gods is the fascinating story of one man trying to redefine himself between two worlds while suffering mental illness along the way. The book charts with brutal honesty, Michael’s descent into various episodes of psychosis and vivid hallucinations triggered by his experience of having his idealism shattered: in love, politics, and paradoxically with the emergence of redemption symbolized by the birth of his daughter. Love and Other Gods is poetic and moving. Michael has articulated his mental illness as only one who knows the darkness can: with an eloquent appreciation for the beauty of the light.
The author was born in 1967 in England, the youngest child of a proudly traditional Sikh family. He grew up in Leeds before going on to study Philosophy and Economics at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and graduated with an MA in Continental Philosophy from the University of Warwick. He became a magazine writer covering the culture and politics of the early noughties before becoming a researcher and producer in the documentaries department for BBC Radio 4 and World Service.
He will be in conversation with Dr Tony Phillips. Tony Phillips started out as an actor, training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, but soon switched to become an American Studies undergraduate at UEA in Norwich, where he also recently completed his PhD by Publication. An experienced radio and podcasting creator and executive, his career has taken him from producing, reporting, and Commissioning Editor at BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 (where he created The Listening Project), to Vice President at WNYC Studios, New York, and to Broccoli Content/Sony Music in the UK. At WNYC he created and developed a Piece of Work with Abbi Jacobson, made in partnership with MoMA, worked as an Executive Producer on Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner, and managed editorial partnerships with Snap Judgement, Science Friday, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and Sci-Show Tangents. Most recently, Tony wrote and presented an Archive on 4 for Radio 4 on the tragic life of David Oluwale and he was executive producer with independent TV company Northern Town Productions on a Liverpool-based documentary film for Sky Arts titled Statues Redressed.