Renowned author Colm Tóibín's international bestseller Brooklyn deals with the agonies of trying to adapt to the customs of a strange new land. When we meet main character Eilis Lacey 20 years later, in Tóibín’s latest novel, Long Island, she again grapples with the pull of her home country Ireland.

So what does Tóibín make of our yearning to belong, and how it can twist us internally? How it can drive otherwise rational people to damn entire groups of people?

In this special episode, Tóibín, who is in Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival and the Melbourne Writers Festival, toys with these themes in a discussion on migrants, Donald Trump and the new Pope. And the times when even he can’t find the right words, in his own life.