Past Programs
Books - Fiction - 2006
Athol Fugard: Tsotsi Read Transcript
27/12/2006
This morning The Book Show is off to San Diego to speak to one of South Africa's most eminent playrights and cultural figures – Athol Fugard. At the age of 74 he splits his time between Port Elizabeth in South Africa and the USA. Athol Fugard was born in 1932, the son of English and Afrikaner parents, and he is the father of South African theatre.
PLEASE NOTE: This interview was first broadcast on The Book Show on February 13, 2006.
A passion for death and gore
01/12/2006
For most of human existence, death, violence and the associated mess and stench, have been unavoidable realities. But something started to change towards the end of the 19th century, and so the 20th century became a period of surprising timidity (in the west at least) surrounding death and gore.
We knew it existed, but we didn't want to be exposed to the details. And we certainly didn't want to talk about it. Our language become politely inadequate, public death became a taboo and apart from the cultural containment of this 'fact-of-life' in horror films and other comic exaggerations, more than a glimpse of the real thing in our peripheral vision was way too much.
So what's been happening in the 21st century? Suddenly we're obsessed with books and TV shows about autopsies and violent murder. We seem to love a good post-mortem with our after-dinner drinks, so much so that the prime-time competition for our TV attention with bits-of-bodies on gurneys is breathtaking and forensic pathologists have, somehow, become more prevalent than quiz-show hosts. So today The Book Show is looking at our new fascination with what could be described as 'full-frontal death'.
To discuss all this, Ramona Koval is joined by three people who know their stuff:
Sydney author Kathryn Fox is a crime writer AND a medical practitioner, with a specialty in forensic medicine. She's a member of the UK Association of Forensic Physicians, and so her two novels, Malicious Intent and Without Consent, both centred around the character of Forensic Physician Dr Anya Crichton, display a clinical knowledge and detail that is both impressive and chilling.
Novelist James Bradley is also based in Sydney, and you may have heard him earlier this year talking about his latest novel The Resurrectionist, a grim and messy 19th century story of the trade in bodies and body parts. And James has displayed a passion, in this and his other novels, Wrack and The Deep Field, for the sort of speculative fiction that asks difficult moral questions and places the reader in unpleasant and confronting spaces.
And finally, from Los Angeles, Naren Shankar, executive producer and co-showrunner of that unavoidable prime-time phenomenon, the CSI (or Crime Scene Investigation) TV series. Along with a host of other highly explicit forensic TV programs from the US and the UK that have come out over the past five to ten years, the CSI series has made the language and science of forensic medicine seem so familiar, so routine, SO effective that these fictional stories are having a real impact in real courtrooms and on real murder and assault cases.
Alex Miller: Truth in Fiction and History Read Transcript
30/11/2006
Today on The Book Show we're going to hear an edited version of a lecture called Written In Our Hearts: Thinking About Truth in Fiction and History, by writer Alex Miller. He was speaking at a Victorian Writers' Centre lecture at the State Library of Victoria earlier this week.
Alex Miller was born in London in 1936, his father was from Glasgow and his Mother was Irish and he emigrated alone to Australia at the age of 16. After working as an itinerant stockman on cattle stations in Central Queensland and the Gulf Country - evidence that, for a writer, everything is research, even if you don't know you're doing it at the time.
After travelling around for a while, he graduated from the University of Melbourne in English and History in 1965. He was co-founder of the Anthill Theatre and a founding member of the Melbourne Writers' Theatre. So he has had a life with a capital 'L', and had many chances to listen to stories beyond the confines of the writer's study. He's won the Miles Franklin Award twice: with his 1993 novel The Ancestor Game and then again in 2003 for his novel Journey To The Stone Country, and he was short-listed in two other years. So by any measure Alex Miller is one of Australia's outstanding novelists.
First we'll hear an edited version of his lecture Written In Our Hearts: Thinking About Truth in Fiction and History. When I spoke to Alex after the lecture, I said I was struck by that image of his great-grandfather's thumbprint on his grandfather's birth certificate, and I asked him if the knowledge that he came from people who were not readers and whose history wasn't written, was at the forefront of his mind when he was studying history?
Lionel Shriver
08/10/2006
We Need To Talk About Kevin—that's the title of Lionel Shriver's prize winning novel about motherhood gone awry. And we're not just talking a little bit awry, we are talking about a mother who brings a mass murderer into the world. Kevin is one of those (all too common these days) American teenagers who kills his classmates. And this book takes the form of a series of letters from his mother Eva. In these letters Eva wonders what went wrong and was it her fault.
And with yet another school shooting in the US overnight, in an Amish community (although this time it appears not to have been a disaffected student), you wonder why schools are targeted.
We Need To Talk About Kevin won Lionel Shriver the 2005 Orange Prize For Fiction. Lionel Shriver was also a guest at the recent Brisbane Writers' Festival which is where I caught up with her.
She began our session with a reading. It's about a day of mother and son bonding and I should warn you ends up with some coarse language.
Spotlight on Scotland: Dilys Rose and Ewan Morrison
06/10/2006
Now to Ewan Morrison and Dilys Rose, two Scottish writers whose professional experience may or may not have included moments like this.
They were in Sydney as part of a cultural exchange organised by the Varuna Writers' Centre and spoke to me at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
Ewan Morrison's book is a collection of short stories called The last book you read and it's a debut, but Ewan has done a fair bit of writing before. After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art he wrote art criticism and screenplays. He's also worked in television. His first novel has already been submitted for publication and his second is on the way.
But we begin this Spotlight On Scotland session with Dylis Rose, who is almost an elder stateswoman of Scottish writing. She was born and brought up in Glasgow, but lives in Edinburgh. She's published five collections of short stories, including Our Lady of the Pickpockets, Red tides, War dolls, and Lord of illusions. She's also written several books of poetry, written for stage, and collaborated with musicians and artists, as well teaching creative writing at Edinburgh University.
We begin this Spotlight On Scotland with Dilys Rose reading three of her character studies, which were written in collaboration with a visual artist.
And the conversation comes with a coarse language warning.
Lionel Shriver
03/10/2006
We Need To Talk About Kevin—that's the title of Lionel Shriver's prize winning novel about motherhood gone awry. And we're not just talking a little bit awry, we are talking about a mother who brings a mass murderer into the world. Kevin is one of those (all too common these days) American teenagers who kills his classmates. And this book takes the form of a series of letters from his mother Eva. In these letters Eva wonders what went wrong and was it her fault.
And with yet another school shooting in the US overnight, in an Amish community (although this time it appears not to have been a disaffected student), you wonder why schools are targeted.
We Need To Talk About Kevin won Lionel Shriver the 2005 Orange Prize For Fiction. Lionel Shriver was also a guest at the recent Brisbane Writers' Festival which is where I caught up with her.
She began our session with a reading. It's about a day of mother and son bonding and I should warn you ends up with some coarse language.
Edmundo Paz Soldán on cyberterrorism, globalisation and political oppression
17/09/2006
Edmundo Paz Soldán is a prolific novelist but a relatively new name to English-speaking audiences. The Bolivian writer has just released his sixth novel, but it's only the second to be translated into English. The book is called Turing's Delirium, and it tells a very modern Bolivian story – but a story that also conjures terrible ghosts of the past.
An old dictator, Montenegro, has been democratically returned to power in Bolivia, mere decades after a bloody anti-communist reign. New Bolivia is now a player on the global stage, but a poor player, easily abused. Edmundo Paz Soldán's tale is set in the fictional city of Rio Fugitivo, where the local power company has been privatised and bought by a multinational firm. Far from this bringing benefits, the price of electricity has skyrocketed and there are constant blackouts.
This sets the scene for a battle between angry young people who use computers to hack and vandalise these new global enemies, and the state – in particular the codebreakers of the old regime who work in a place called The Black Chamber. Part of this story is told through the mind of a dying man ... Albert, the founder of The Black Chamber. His mind is slipping. He's a beligerent and evil old bastard who's determined to live, but who's losing his grip on reality.
Edmundo Paz Soldán on cyberterrorism, globalisation and political oppression
14/09/2006
Edmundo Paz Soldán is a prolific novelist but a relatively new name to English-speaking audiences. The Bolivian writer has just released his sixth novel, but it's only the second to be translated into English. The book is called Turing's Delirium, and it tells a very modern Bolivian story – but a story that also conjures terrible ghosts of the past.
An old dictator, Montenegro, has been democratically returned to power in Bolivia, mere decades after a bloody anti-communist reign. New Bolivia is now a player on the global stage, but a poor player, easily abused. Edmundo Paz Soldán's tale is set in the fictional city of Rio Fugitivo, where the local power company has been privatised and bought by a multinational firm. Far from this bringing benefits, the price of electricity has skyrocketed and there are constant blackouts.
This sets the scene for a battle between angry young people who use computers to hack and vandalise these new global enemies, and the state – in particular the codebreakers of the old regime who work in a place called The Black Chamber. Part of this story is told through the mind of a dying man ... Albert, the founder of The Black Chamber. His mind is slipping. He's a beligerent and evil old bastard who's determined to live, but who's losing his grip on reality.
The dystopian worlds of Rupert Thomson
10/09/2006
Now to an author who changes characters' worlds overnight and sits back to see how they reconstruct their lives... In Rupert Thomson's latest book Divided Kingdom, an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night by armed soldiers, soon learning that he is the victim of a radical experiment - the Rearrangement.
Occuring in a totalitarian, near-future England, the Rearrangement has seen the country's entire population forcibly reorganized into four autonomous republics—not according to race, creed or religion, but according to psychology, or the four humours: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine.
Placed in an orphanage, and given a new name, Thomas Parry is soon transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter. Later, he takes a clandestine job with the government and risks being charged with 'undermining the state' when he crosses borders and goes in search of his past and his true self.
Rupert Thomson's earlier novel, The Book of Revelation, makes for an even more disturbing read—a male dancer starts out for cigarettes on a sunny day and winds up shackled to the floor where three hooded women make him their sex slave for 18 days. This novel has now been made into a film by Australian director Ana Kokkinos, starring Tom Long, Greta Scacchi and Colin Friels. The film is currently screening in Australia.
Rupert Thomson was a guest of the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival this August where he spoke with Rhiannon Brown.
The dystopian worlds of Rupert Thomson
05/09/2006
Now to an author who changes characters' worlds overnight and sits back to see how they reconstruct their lives... In Rupert Thomson's latest book Divided Kingdom, an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night by armed soldiers, soon learning that he is the victim of a radical experiment - the Rearrangement.
Occuring in a totalitarian, near-future England, the Rearrangement has seen the country's entire population forcibly reorganized into four autonomous republics—not according to race, creed or religion, but according to psychology, or the four humours: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine.
Placed in an orphanage, and given a new name, Thomas Parry is soon transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter. Later, he takes a clandestine job with the government and risks being charged with 'undermining the state' when he crosses borders and goes in search of his past and his true self.
Rupert Thomson's earlier novel, The Book of Revelation, makes for an even more disturbing read—a male dancer starts out for cigarettes on a sunny day and winds up shackled to the floor where three hooded women make him their sex slave for 18 days. This novel has now been made into a film by Australian director Ana Kokkinos, starring Tom Long, Greta Scacchi and Colin Friels. The film is currently screening in Australia.
Rupert Thomson was a guest of the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival this August where he spoke with Rhiannon Brown.
Polash Larsen's review of Londonstani, by Gautam Malkani
05/09/2006
Laden with vernacular and violence, Gautam Malkani's debut comic novel Londonstani follows the lives of young desi homeboy Jes and his mates - Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men and wannabe middle-class hoodlums - in London's ethnically charged Hounslow borough, an area bordering Heathrow Airport with a significant immigrant population, many from India and South Asia. They call themselves 'desis', a term stemming from the Indian diaspora.
Our reviewer Polash Larsen revelled in the chaotic mix of slang, urban patois, and text message shorthand - and he gives us his take on the book ... and a warning that the following item contains language that may offend ...
Telling stories: Rana Dasgupta at the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival
03/09/2006
One of the international guests currently visiting the Melbourne Writers' Festival is Rana Dasgupta, whose novel Tokyo Cancelled consists of thirteen stories told by some unlucky passengers stranded in an airport lounge en route to Tokyo. Stuck together in this space - beyond which they'll probably never meet again - this circle of oddfellows pass the time telling fantastical tales.
Rana Dasgupta tells Maria Zijlstra about his fascination with that age-old kind of storytelling, and what use he made of it in his highly-praised first book.
Telling stories: Rana Dasgupta at the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival
29/08/2006
One of the international guests currently visiting the Melbourne Writers' Festival is Rana Dasgupta, whose novel Tokyo Cancelled consists of thirteen stories told by some unlucky passengers stranded in an airport lounge en route to Tokyo. Stuck together in this space - beyond which they'll probably never meet again - this circle of oddfellows pass the time telling fantastical tales.
Rana Dasgupta tells Maria Zijlstra about his fascination with that age-old kind of storytelling, and what use he made of it in his highly-praised first book.
Australian landscape, innocence, families and justice in Mark O'Flynns' <em> Grassdogs</em>
10/08/2006
Another one of the books launched at Byron Bay was Grassdogs by Australian author Mark O'Flynn.
Mark was the winner of a Varuna Manuscript Development Award and comes at this novel from a world of playwriting, theatre and poetry. And it's a triumph of compassion. The main character, Edgar, is a damaged boy who is orphaned too soon and who never really has a chance to get life right. There is a really delicate sensibility in this book, in that it allows you to see the world from Edgar's point-of-view. And from this point-of-view, a lot of things we take for granted don't actually make much sense.
Jill Kitson's review of Philip Roth's Everyman
17/05/2006
Two years ago, hard on the heels of his wonderful trilogy about America through the post-war decades (American Pastoral, I Married A Communist and The Human Stain), and just when we thought his great talent must have exhausted itself, Philip Roth published The Plot Against America - part childhood memoir, part nightmare fantasy about a fascist America under President Charles Lindbergh.
Now the 73-year-old Roth has produced a novella about death and dying, called Everyman. Jill Kitson's been reading it. What did she make of it?
Michael Hofmann on Joseph Roth
04/05/2006
We visit the Berlin of the 1920s and 30s, seen through the eyes of author and journalist Joseph Roth and revived for us in sparkling form by his translator, the poet, writer and critic Michael Hofmann.
Joseph Roth was born in 1894 and, after serving in the First World War, he started writing for newspapers in Vienna and later in Berlin. When he was appointed Paris Correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, he was one of the best-paid journalists in Germany. His greatest novel is agreed to be The Radetzky March. Nine of Roth's books have been translated into English and there are more on the way.
Ramona Koval talks to Michael Hofmann about the enduring impact of Joseph Roth's writing and about his own role in the establishment of these works as classics.
That's this week on Books & Writing, with Ramona Koval at 7.25 Sunday evening and repeated at 1.05 on Wednesday afternoon ... on Radio National.
Dame Fiona Kidman
02/05/2006
Dame Fiona Kidman is a major figure in New Zealand's literary culture. A writer of short stories, novels, poems, plays and non-fiction works, she talks to Ramona Koval about her novel Songs From The Violet Café, about the persistence of lost children in her stories and about the common literary themes shared by writers from New Zealand, Canada and Australia.
Hilary McPhee on Truman Capote
26/03/2006
Hilary McPhee is a writer and publisher (including internet publishing) and former chair of the Australia Council. She will be a regular contributor on all kind things in public debate across the book world.
Her distinguished career includes co-founding and directing McPhee Gribble Publishers, an independent publishing company with a reputation for developing new authors. Her book Other People's Words was a memoir of a life in publishing. Today Hilary is discussing the film Capote, depicting the writing of Truman Capote's groundbreaking work In Cold Blood.
Hilary McPhee on Truman Capote
20/03/2006
Hilary McPhee is a writer and publisher (including internet publishing) and former chair of the Australia Council. She will be a regular contributor on all kind things in public debate across the book world.
Her distinguished career includes co-founding and directing McPhee Gribble Publishers, an independent publishing company with a reputation for developing new authors. Her book Other People's Words was a memoir of a life in publishing. Today Hilary is discussing the film Capote, depicting the writing of Truman Capote's groundbreaking work In Cold Blood.
Tony Birch: Shadowboxing (transcript available)
12/03/2006
Tony Birch was last in this studio when we spoke last year on Books and Writing about teaching creative writing. That's what he does as a day job at the University of Melbourne. He is a poet and a writer of short fiction and creative non-fiction. He is here today on the publication of a collection of stories called Shadowboxing.
Tim Parks discusses The Perfect Hoax
10/03/2006
What's the perfect antidote to your writerly anxiety about how your brilliant literary creations will be received by a cruel and uncaring world? Why, it's simple! Don't ever publish. Don't even seek publication. This way, one avoids the crushing disappointments of rejection ... and one's dreams and delusions remain blissfully intact. So goes the premise of an Italian novella titled (in the English version) A Perfect Hoax.
Settle back now, as novelist, essayist and translator Tim Parks gives the remarkable background to this story, written in 1925, by the Italian writer Italo Svevo ...
Tony Birch: Shadowboxing
07/03/2006
Tony Birch was last in this studio when we spoke last year on Books and Writing about teaching creative writing. That's what he does as a day job at the University of Melbourne. He is a poet and a writer of short fiction and creative non-fiction. He is here today on the publication of a collection of stories called Shadowboxing.
Shadowboxing is an autobiographical walk through the life of young Michael and his family – a family of battlers living in the mean streets of Fitzroy in the Melbourne of the 1960s. These are stories told simply, but with great power. There is the drink and the beltings given to wives and children and the slow crumbling of the suburb as the old houses give way to bulldozers and the commission flats. But there is also the wonder of childhood and the first blossomings of boyhood and the kind of redemption possible with the coming of manhood and understanding.
Athol Fugard: Tsotsi (transcript available)
13/02/2006
This morning The Book Show is off to San Diego to speak to one of South Africa's most eminent playrights and cultural figures – Athol Fugard. At the age of 74 he splits his time between Port Elizabeth in South Africa and the USA. Athol Fugard was born in 1932, the son of English and Afrikaner parents, and he is the father of South African theatre.
