Book Reading

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

2.05pm Mon - Fri
September 18 - October 13
The Children's Bach
by Helen Garner
Read by Genevieve Picot
Athena and Dexter lead an ordinary, happy family life in inner-suburban Melbourne with their two sons. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the reappearance of Elizabeth, close to twenty years after she and Dexter were at university together. The chance encounter of two old friends sets in train a series of upheavals and explosions which leaves none of them untouched. And all these dramas are played out to a soundtrack of music, which has a different meaning for each of them.
Helen Garner is one of Australia's best known writers. Her first book, Monkey Grip, was published in 1977 and inspired a feature film. Her other books include Honour and Other People's Children, The First Stone, True Stories - a collection of her journalism, and My Hard Heart, a new collection of fiction.
Genevieve Picot's work in theatre, film and television has made her one of Australia's best-known actors. Her role in the feature film Proof brought her a second AFI nomination for best actress, and she toured Australia as Olive in the Melbourne Theatre Company's 1995 revival of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
Sound engineer Paul Penton
Abridged and produced by Justine Lees

Cassettes of the reading are available from ABC Shops and Centres

2.05pm Mon - Fri
October 16 - November 11
All Quiet On the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
read by Richard Kelly
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) is perhaps the best known novel of World War I.
In November 1916, when Remarque was an eighteen-year-old student, he was conscripted. After basic training he was assigned to a trench unit near the Western Front. He was a calm, self-possessed soldier, and when his classmate Troske was wounded by grenade splinters, Remarque carried him to safety. He was devastated when Troske died in hospital of head wounds that had gone unnoticed. Still, he rescued another comrade before he himself was severely injured - also by grenade splinters - and remained in hospital for much of 1917-1918. The war ended before Remarque could return to active service, but even though he had not experienced frontline fighting at its worst, the war had changed his attitudes forever.
In its first year (1929), German readers alone bought more than one million copies of All Quiet; and the British, French, and Americans bought thousands more. By 1932 it had been translated into 29 languages.
Despite its popularity, the book generated a storm of controversy. The Nazis chose to read it as an attack on the greatness of the German nation. They variously claimed that he was a French Jew, an old man who had never seen a battlefield, or the worthless son of millionaire parents. Remarque refused to comment, later telling an interviewer, "I was only misunderstood where people went out of their way to misunderstand me."
In 1931 Remarque was forced to leave Germany, and his novels were thrown into the fire during the infamous book-burning of 1933. He was deprived of his German citizenship in 1938. Remarque died in 1970. In Germany, the weekly journal Der Spiegel published an obituary that managed to omit his ever having written a great World War I novel. Remarque would not have been surprised.
Sound engineer: Simon Rose
Producer: Christopher Williams