Past Programs
Books - Non Fiction - 2007
Bird watching with Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson Read Transcript
24/12/2007
Today, Ramona Koval presents an event from the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal, with Canadian husband-and-wife team Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, who are both authors and both avid bird-watchers. They speak of their wonder and intense involvement with the life of birds, and with birds' relationships to humans.
One of the most exquisite books to appear on our shelves in recent times has been a lovingly crafted collection of stories and images, poems and observations, myths and science; all gathered together as The bedside book of cirds: an avian miscellany with introductions to each chapter by Graeme Gibson.
Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson have been named joint honorary president of the Rare Bird Division of BirdLife international – an appointment which caused Margaret to describe them as 'the William and Mary of Orange of Birding'.
Imagining the literary future and the year in review
21/12/2007
Today we reflect on the literary year that's been and speculate on what 2008 may bring in publishing and literary life.
Domestically, Australia has undergone a major political shift. We've swapped prime ministers and parties in government, but does that signal a shift in the nation's psyche, or is Kevin Rudd just John Howard lite?
Will we see ourselves reflected in new ways in the work of authors, journalists, playwrights and screenwriters or can we expect more continuity than change?
Internationally the world will be focussed on getting the United States to join the team on climate change -- while the US itself will be in election mode in 2008 -- and looking inward.
Which voices will prick our collective conscience? Who will step forward to take the place of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya or Turkish newspaper editor Hrant Dink?
To discuss these and other issues the Book Show is joined by some fine literary thinkers:
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books;
Henry Rosenbloom, head of Melbourne based Scribe Publishing;
and playwright, author and speechwriter Michael Gurr.
The world without us: a thought experiment with Alan Weisman Read Transcript
20/12/2007
What would the world be like without us? Without people that is? How quickly would nature reassert control over our cities and farms -- buckling the bitumen and cracking the concrete? And what traces would humans leave behind? The visible ones might be stainless steel saucepans and aluminium dishwasher parts -- the invisible ones, much more deadly traces of plastics and heavy metals.
Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us is a thought experiment. By turns uplifting, as it describes the incredible regenerative power of nature, and depressing as it tells of the long-term and often invisible damage we have inflicted on the planet, particularly over the past half century.
The resurgence of the essay with Julianne Schultz Read Transcript
19/12/2007
The essay in Australia is undergoing a resurgence - in recent years we've seen the arrival of long-form non-fiction published in The Monthly and The Quarterly Essay both published by Black Inc.
The Australian book review now runs an annual essay prize worth $10000, and essays attract prizes at some Premier's Literary Awards.
And there's Griffith Review soon to celebrate its 5th year in print and a champion of the essay form.
It was Griffith Review that published Frank Moorhouse's influential piece - 'the Writer in a time of Terror, which won a Walkley award, a Victoria Premier's Literary Award and the 2007 PEN Keneally Award.
So what cultural shifts explain the recent flourishing of the essay in Australia?
Julianne Schultz is editor of the Griffith Review.
Taslima Nasreen: Bangladeshi writer in hiding in India Read Transcript
19/12/2007
Writers are often credited with having a licence to write the things that some of us wouldn't dare utter in private, let alone in public. You might agree that that's a good thing -- that some writers have the courage to go where others fear to tread.
But what if their ideas are deemed controversial, or offensive, and there are calls for a book to be changed? Should the writer back down?
The Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has found herself in just that dilemma. Taslima Nasreen is a poet and physician who describes herself a 'radical feminist'.
Her work has sparked controversy across the subcontinent, and she's been the subject of numerous death threats.
She's been in hiding in the Indian capital New Delhi since November when violent protests erupted over her autobiography, known as Split In Two in English.
Muslim groups say the book is derogatory to Islam. And given her status as a guest in India, Nasreen's case has become a national, political issue.
After some pressure, Nasreen has said she will withdraw some of the lines in the offending book. But should she?
To tell us more about Taslima Nasreen, Professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair, the editor of the Indian literary review Biblio joins the Book Show from New Delhi.
Speaking up for silence: writing, silence and solitude
18/12/2007
In speaking up for silence, Aldous Huxley said in the 1940s that the volume of the world had been turned up and he blamed radio for this increase, but now we could say that the volume of the world has been turned up even louder with saturation advertising, mobile phones, internet, blackberries, ipods - the list goes on of all today's modern distractions.
It's not surprising that it can be hard to gather your thoughts sometimes, and for writers, it seems even more crucial to be able to carve out time and space to be able to compose an argument for an essay or a character for a novel.
Stuart Sim is so passionate about noise pollution that he's written a Manifesto for Silence. He says having quiet space is crucial to our literary culture, and to religious and philosophical thought. And he also looks at how the concept of silence has been used by writers to signify death, the unknowable and the unspeakable.
Writers retreats can provide the perfect refuge for those who can't write in cafes or at home - they are reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's belief in the need for 'a room of one's own'. One that's been set up over the last couple of years is Glenfern house in Melbourne.
It has fine artistic pedigree because it was formerly of the creative Boyd family and is now part of the National Trust. With the help of Iola Matthews it has been converted into a writers retreat, and now there's a new community of writers at the historic house including bird watcher Sean Dooley and literary fiction writer, Hilary Bonnie.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange ponders the connection between writing, silence and solitude with a personal reverie about the need for quiet.
In praise of the common reader: Ramona Koval's Overland public lecture Read Transcript
14/12/2007
Instead of being the host who asks the questions, today we have Ramona Koval's Overland lecture. We often talk about literature as a window on the real world, but some still ask whether you can understand real life by reading novels. In her lecture, Ramona Koval borrows from Virginia Woolf to talk about the common reader: to praise the common reader's good sense and to warn against restricting what should and shouldn't be read.
An extraordinary collection: the Macleay Collection of natural history
13/12/2007
What's worth collecting? What are the cultural, scientific, philosophical and aesthetic principles that determine why we preserve some objects and discard others? What do collections tell us about ourselves and our world? And how are collections best displayed?
Museum is a handsome new book that focuses on one particular collection, the Macleay Collection of natural history, housed mainly at the University of Sydney. Museum combines a stunning photographic survey of the specimens -- most of which are insects -- with a history of the Macleay Collection. Photographer Robyn Stacey has captured the look and feel of the collection with the eye of a still-life painter.
Robyn's images are combined with essays by Ashley Hay that tell an important Australian story.
This is the second book collaboration between Robyn Stacey and Ashley Hay -- their first book, in what seems to be becoming a series, was called Herbarium, and was about the National Herbarium of NSW.
Rats of the air or heroes of war? The surprising history of pigeons Read Transcript
12/12/2007
Often referred to as rats of the air, pigeons are seen as dirty, smelly, disease spreading vermin. But their gentle cooing has won pigeons their fans, including Andrew Blechman, who's written a book about them called Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird.
I Wouldn't Start From Here by Andrew Mueller (review) Read Transcript
26/11/2007
Andrew Mueller writes under many different hats and in his latest book, I Wouldn't Start From Here: A Misguided Tour Of The Early 21st Century, he combines all of his different perspectives as a foreign correspondent, travel writer, rock critic, author and, as he says, 'general all-purpose hack'.
This book fits into a sort of 'danger travel genre' and for the Book Show, reviewer George Dunford put on his backpack and went on Andrew Mueller's journey in I Wouldn't Start From Here.
Political satire...we promise we won't talk about the election...maybe
23/11/2007
Now it's a fair guess that, apart from the hard-core political junkies among us, after such a seemingly interminable federal election campaign, most of us are well ready for a good, cathartic scream, followed by a lie down.
Why do they do it to us? Why do we allow them to do it to us? Maybe the answer is that it provides the excuse, and the fuel, for that most exquisite of creative forms -- satire. And the more we hate our pollies and bureaucrats, the more we love our purveyors of political parody.
And for some reason, this political campaign seems to have generated a glorious revival of the art-form of (to use that most Australian of colloquialisms) the 'piss-take'
So as we take a sharp intake of breath before the scream, Ramona Koval is joined by three people who indulge in a bit of parodic behaviour themselves.
Fiona Katauskas, one of this countries marvellous cartoonists, whose work appears mainly in the Sydney Morning Herald and who also produces the 'Talking Pictures' segment of the Insiders program on ABC TV.
Danny Katz, writer and columnist and an expert in the art of social satire; contributor to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and author of a very cute new children's book called A Little Election, with fabulous images by Mitch Vane.
And finally, the man who has been distilling the output of our newspaper artists for many years now, as editor of the much anticipated annual Best Australian Political Cartoons, Russ Radcliffe.
New York Review of Books update with Robert Silvers Read Transcript
22/11/2007
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, talks about Philip Roth's new novel Exit Ghost, the latest and last in the series begun in 1979 featuring New England writer Nathan Zuckerman. He tells us about environmental activist Dai Qing on China's dire water shortage and a 'looming environmental catastrophe'; and about several new books revealing how drug companies have helped exaggerate the extent of serious depression in order to push sales of antidepressants.
Nature's monsters and our imagination with David Quammen Read Transcript
21/11/2007
A book about nature's monsters: the Romanian dictator Ceausescu used to hunt bears in the wild, but really he was killing bears that had been fattened and set up for him. We could ask, who was the real monster? and this is the sort of question David Quammen asks in his book Monster of God: the Man Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind.
David Quammen is a much honoured non-fiction writer. He was Rhodes scholar and has stacks of awards including a Guggenheim fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote The Song of the Dodo that included sections on the biology and geography of Tasmania.
David Quammen talks to Kirsten Garrett from his home in the wintery mountains of Montana about how this more recent book Monster of God came into being.
David Edgerton's Shock of the Old (review) Read Transcript
20/11/2007
Which do you think was the more important technological advancement -- the rickshaw or the jumbo jet? The condom or the contraceptive pill?
Perhaps the answers are not as obvious as you might first think...
In The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, well known historian of modern military and industrial technology David Edgerton challenges the idea of technology as a glistening behemoth, frog-marching us ever forward into a bigger, better, brighter, faster, future...
Reviewer Jock Given takes a closer look for The Book Show.
Inside the PR industry with Bob Burton
19/11/2007
Moving from fiction where, for the most part, you know you're not dealing with fact, to the world of 'spin', where it can be very hard to know who is telling the whole truth about anything. There's fake TV news, carefully crafted media messages, and more and more stuff on the world wide web where you wouldn't know who's saying what.
Canberra journalist Bob Burton has written Inside Spin: The Dark Underbelly of the PR Industry. Kirsten Garrett asks him when it all started.
Chris Sheedy and Jenny Bond on the stories behind the world's favourite books
14/11/2007
What influenced writers like Jane Austen and Peter Carey to take up the pen? Chris Sheedy and Jenny Bond reveal the stories behind the stories in Behind the bestsellers: the stories behind the world's favourite books.
Lapham's Quarterly: a new project for former editor of Harpers
08/11/2007
The name of Lewis Lapham is synonymous with the New York magazine Harpers, the monthly journal that he edited for 30 years. Last year, Lapham stepped back from the role of editor, while still retaining the positions of editor emeritus and national correspondent. He still writes his Notebook column for the magazine, for which he won a National Magazine Award in 1995 for exhibiting 'an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity.'
Most people would find that more than enough to be going on with, but Lapham has also been actively involved with another project, the ambition and range of which is truly epic.
He's about to launch a new magazine called Lapham's Quarterly. It's a journal that seeks to make sense of present day events through the prism of great writers and thinkers from the past.
Lewis Lapham joins the Book Show on the phone from New York.
How we got here: The Guinea Pig's History of Biology
05/11/2007
Here is a tale which has an extraordinary range of characters -- rats, peacocks, zebra fish, passionflowers, bacteriophages and many others -- and the plot has lots of sexual and social intrigue. It's the story of how humans got here, as well as the creatures around us. It's called The Guinea Pig's History of Biology, and Kirsten Garrett interviews the author, science historian Dr Jim Endersby.
Sara Paretsky's Writing in an Age of Silence (review) Read Transcript
02/11/2007
Sara Paretsky is well known for her best-selling VI Warshawski crime novels, and her tough-talking, Smith and Wesson wielding heroine, Vic, who was one of the first female crime fighters to grace the pages of genre fiction.
But Radio National's Lynne Mitchell has discovered that this time she's written a very different sort of book called Writing in an Age of Silence.
The history of virginity with Hanne Blank Read Transcript
22/10/2007
How do you define virginity? According to historian Hanne Blank, it's not as straightforward as you'd think. St Thomas Aquinas said that to be a virgin you had to be pure of body and mind. In Ancient Greek times the 'parthenios' were considered virgins and yet they often had children; and during the Renaissance the 'piss prophets' would study the urine of young women to test their virginity. It's the history of virginity on the Book Show -- it's not as simple as the birds and the bees.
The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (review) Read Transcript
09/10/2007
Is the internet making our culture and society more banal? Are we becoming less intelligent in the age of information? A new book by Andrew Keen says this is indeed the case. He argues that because ordinary people can post opinions and film clips online, as well as contribute their ideas to pseudo-encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, that our culture is being swamped by mediocrity. Our culture -- represented by novels, music, newspapers and the like -- is threatened by this new army of amateurs.
Simon Cooper is here to review The Cult of the Amateur and he is only partly convinced.
Getting a handle on Henry: Henry Handel Richardson
08/10/2007
Henry Handel Richardson is one of the greats of early 20th century Australian literature. She wrote The Fortunes of Richard Mahony and The Getting of Wisdom as well as music, poems and short stories. After 13 years and 12 volumes the largest research project ever undertaken on an Australian author has just finished. Henry Handel Richardson's work has been reassessed in this Monash University project.
Limits of Location -- delving into the Mitchell Library collections
01/10/2007
The Mitchell library gave access to its extensive collection of its now huge collection of documents to l2 academics and writers from the Independent Scholars group - and from that comes The Limits of Location, edited by Gretchen Poiner and Sybil Jack.
Among the writers was Marie de Lepervanche, an anthropologist who has written before on Indian communities in Australia, and widow of George Munster. As an independent scholar, she found material in the library about a little realised part of Australian history -- the very early use of labour from India.
For the Book Show, Radio National's Kirsten Garrett talked first to Gretchen Poiner, about the purpose of the Independent Scholars group.
Simon Sebag Montefiore on The Young Stalin
28/09/2007
Joseph Stalin may have been a man of steel, a force behind the Russian Revolution, a founding father of the communist party and head of the superpower Soviet Union until his death in 1953.
But he was also part punk gangster, part poet, intellectual, charismatic visionary and orchestrator of some of the worst human rights violations in modern history.
Stalin's personal journey from studying the priesthood to despot is brought to life in a new biography by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.
At the recent Edinburgh International Book Festival, Simon Sebag Montefiore talks about his most recent book, The Young Stalin, and unfolds one of the events that established Stalin as one of Lenin's key henchmen -- the most famous robbery of the early 20th century. Stalin was the man behind it all.
Gideon Haigh: Sydney PEN lecture on prejudice
27/09/2007
Over the last 20 years, Gideon Haigh has written widely about sport, especially cricket, and business. But in the second of the series Sydney PEN Voices: The 3 Writers Project, Haigh looks at the historical divide between nationalism and patriotism in Australia. Haigh's Sydney PEN lecture is based on his essay, Facepaint Patriots. The essay maps nationalism from its Enlightenment origins, through its fascist excesses and its prejudicial overtones, and discusses how Australia arrived at its own sense of nationhood.
Sydney PEN's 3 Writers Project is a series of public lectures by three of Australia's leading writers and explores the issues facing contemporary Australia.
Ramona Koval is in conversation with the Australian journalist and author Gideon Haigh.
The Curtain by Milan Kundera (review) Read Transcript
24/09/2007
As book lovers, we all intuitively understand the value of the novel, but Czech novelist Milan Kundera -- famous for his work The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- has looked at its significance to Western civilisation in his latest essay, The Curtain. This builds on his previous exploration of the novel in The Art of the Novel, but in The Curtain he looks at how the novel transgresses borders of nation and language to reveal something about the very nature of existence.
Reviewer Geordie Williamson lifts 'the curtain' on Milan Kundera's latest contemplation on the art of the novel.
Bill Bryson's Shakespeare (review) Read Transcript
17/09/2007
Popular author Bill Bryson is best known for his travel writing, but he's also penned a few very intelligent books about the English language. This interest stretches its legs in his latest title, a biography about William Shakespeare that aims to dispel the myths. Patricia Maunder reviews this new addition to the ever-expanding library of scholarship about the Bard, it's simply titled Shakespeare.
Jon Ronson: Edinburgh International Book Festival
12/09/2007
Journalist, writer and broadcaster Jon Ronson has written several funny books about the world of conspiracy theorists. In Them: Adventures with Extremists and The men who stare at goats, he takes us around jihad training camps, to Ku Klux Klan meetings, and inside American militia groups. Out of the Ordinary is his new book; a collection of pieces from The Guardian charting the rise of more domestic madnesses.
Nature writing and earthquakes with Dael Allison
11/09/2007
Nature writing is about land, place and environment. Britian has the romantic pastoral tradition, and of course there's Henry David Thoreau in the United States. In Australia, the lyrical tradition of Kendall and Patterson is prominent, but Dael Allison's approach is more political.
Dael Allison won this year's Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize for her piece called Polyp written about the coral reefs affected by an earthquake in Nias, Indonesia in 2005 after she spent eight months there volunteering for the United Nations.
Polyp appears in the Winter edition of Island, Tasmania's literary magazine.
Germaine Greer: Edinburgh International Book Festival
07/09/2007
The irrepressible intelligence of Germaine Greer has recently been applied to a subject she knows a lot about. She did her PhD in 1968 on the ethic of love and marriage in Shakespeare's early comedies, and in her new book Shakespeare's Wife, she takes another look at the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. The marriage has had a very bad press from generations of Oxford and Cambridge dons, who regarded it as cold and loveless. But Germaine argues that Anne has been undervalued both for what she meant to Shakespeare and what she contributed to his work.
This lecture was recorded by the Book Show at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in His Own Words (review) Read Transcript
05/09/2007
Sidney Nolan is Australia's best known, internationally recognised artist; he created the Ned Kelly series. A new collection of interviews with Nolan and other statements by him seeks to decode the man, the myth and the art. Nolan on Nolan: Sidney Nolan in His Own Words is edited by Nancy Underhill. Art historian Janine Burke gave her take on the book.
Rob Sheffield's Love is a mix tape: One Song at a Time (review) Read Transcript
04/09/2007
Mix tapes, those self-compiled cassettes of favourite songs, might seem quaintly antiquated to today's ipod-obsessed, myspace-addicted music culture. Few people listen to cassettes anymore, but for Rolling Stones music writer Rob Sheffield they represent his love for his wife, whose life was tragically cut short.
Sky Harrison has followed Sheffield's music-writing career, and for the Book Show, she looked at his memoir, a personal tale of love, music and grief called Love is a mix tape: One Song at a Time.
Colin Thubron: Edinburgh International Book Festival Read Transcript
03/09/2007
In the first of a series of interviews from the recent Edinburgh International Book Festival, Ramona Koval talks with eminent travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron about his book, Shadow of the Silk Road. The Silk Road is not a single path so much as a network of trade routes that criss-crossed Asia from China to the Mediterranean. In his travels along the Silk Road, Colin Thubron discusses many things: from what he packs in his bag to questions about identity.
Post Hurricane Katrina: writing about New Orleans Read Transcript
23/08/2007
Michelle Rayner: The great playwright Tennessee Williams said of New Orleans that 'on my social passport, Bohemia is indelibly stamped, without regret on my part.' 'Bohemia' must have been a kind of a pseudonym for New Orleans.
The father of southern high gothic, William Faulkner, was a resident of New Orleans when he wrote his first novel, and Williams Burroughs' New Orleans home under the Huey Long Bridge was immortalised by his pal Jack Kerouac in On the Road.
The city of New Orleans has long fostered a thriving literary culture, but what happens when your computer is under water and your roof blows away in the wind? It disrupts not only daily life, but the creative process as well.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to the forced exile of a whole swathe of writers from New Orleans. Two years on from the disaster, some writers have started to move back, they are starting to write again in that city, and particularly about their experience of Hurricane Katrina. For instance, the writer James Lee Burke's The Tin Roof Blowdown, is set in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Jane Ciabattari is from the US National Book Critics Circle and she has been watching the slow re-establishment of the New Orleans literary community. She's a highly regarded journalist and writes and reviews for The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
Anita Heiss and Indigenous publishing
22/08/2007
Poet, chicklit writer, social commentator, and member of the Wirundjeri nation of central New South Wales, Anita Heiss talks about her new book of poetry I'm Not a Racist But... and reflects on the state of Indigenous publishing in Australia. She also wrote a book with children from La Perouse primary school in Sydney called Yirra and her Deadly Dog, Demon.
The anthropology of daily life
16/08/2007
Think about the things you do every day -- eating breakfast, commuting to work, going about your job, watching telly on the sofa.
These routine activities might seem meaningless but our next guest, Joe Moran, says they're as significant to contemporary life as rituals are to tribal societies. He describes himself as an 'anthropologist of the everyday' and he looks at ordinary habits with fresh eyes to uncover their central role in our lives.
Joe Moran is the author of Queuing for Beginners: the Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, a book charting the changes to British routines since the 1930s.
Joe Moran joined Radio National from the BBC's Liverpool studios and spoke to the Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange, who asked him, 'why study everyday life?'
Learning from South Park Read Transcript
14/08/2007
According to a report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority reality TV programs are good for young people. Apparently, shows like Big Brother and Biggest Loser teach teenagers empathy. While this might be hard to believe, as we know, pop culture is not just pop culture - it can be a source of deep intellectual inquiry - the latest issue of the New York Review of Books has a tribute to the Sopranos, there've been countless dissertations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer not to mention the Simpsons.
Now it's the turn of the Simpsons irreverent counterpart - South Park. A book called South Park and Philosophy, subtitled you know I learned something today by academic publisher Blackwell ruminates on the deep philosophical questions posed by this satirical cartoon, which by the way is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Lynne Mitchell has been reading South Park and Philosophy for the Book Show - let's see if she's learnt anything.
Bound for Timbuktu
07/08/2007
Evidence of the West African renaissance of literature from the 1500s is turning up in wooden trunks, caves and boxes hidden in the sand in Timbuktu. Shahid Mathee from the University of Cape Town has been studying these Mali documents known as the Timbuktu manuscripts. Shahid Mathee joins the Book Show from South Africa and talks about some of the surprising finds in these manuscripts, like advice on how to improve romantic liaisons for men.
Imagining the Arctic and Antarctic Read Transcript
26/07/2007
The polar regions have been in the news a lot lately, be it in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, or with images of polar bears perched on melting icebergs -- it's also International Polar Year.
There is something very romantic about the poles, isn't there? They occupy a special place in our imaginations. Antarctica is described as the only true wilderness and is the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth, the Arctic on the other hand has a complex human history from the Saami to the Inuit, but because of the threat of global warming their destinies -- and ours -- are linked.
So, this morning we are joined by three eminent polar writers: a naturalist, historian and archaeologist who have all been either to the Arctic or Antarctic or both.
Science writing about the occult with Deborah Blum
19/07/2007
Mixing science and writing and the supernatural doesn't always make science fiction. In this case, Pulitzer prize winning science writer, Deborah Blum has written a factual book called Ghost Hunters: The Victorians and the Hunt for Proof of Life After Death.
Deborah Blum won the Pulitzer Prize for science writing in 1992; she sits on boards of several international science writing organisations; and she is professor of Science Journalism at the University of Wisconsin and president elect of the National Association of Science Writers in America.
Here, interviewed by Kirsten Garrett, Deborah Blum (in Wisconsin) sets out the background for the intense interest in the occult in Victorian Times - but notes that the idea of ghosts was around long before then.
Nic Pullen on contracts for ghostwriters and biographers
19/07/2007
Contracts are the basis of all formal publishing relationships. Usually they are a fairly straightforward two way agreement between a writer and their publisher. But what happens when a third party is involved, as is the case with authorised biographies and also ghostwritten autobiographies? Suddenly there are three stakeholders, each potentially having a distinct view of how a project should unfold.
What sort of contracts are required then? Can you devise a three way contract that effectively protects the interests of all parties? Who is the publisher answerable to? If there's a dispute, who trumps who? Is it like a game of scissor-paper-rock?
John Berger's political way of seeing Read Transcript
18/07/2007
John Berger is a novelist, storyteller, poet, screenwriter, and art critic. His 1972 BBC series and book Ways of Seeing made an enormous impact as a reaction to Kenneth Clark's series on art Civilisation. Now 80, his new book is Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance and it's a series of reflections written between 2001 and 2006, arising from contemporary political moments -- London in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings, New Orleans after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina, New York after 9/11, and the Middle Eastern troubles, from Bagdad to Gaza.
Comic book appreciation
16/07/2007
Poet Dorothy Parker confessed to loving them, novelist John Updike was greatly influenced by them and EE Cummings said they were a 'living ideal' superior to 'mere reality'. And they were talking about comics!
Comics are popular again and cultural theorists have turned their gaze to the world of good and evil and subversion that some comics represent. Like Jeet Heer, he is an Indian born Canadian and learned to speak English by reading comics.
From that early interest he developed a lifelong passion for this type of storytelling and has written about it for the Boston Globe and the Literary Review of Canada.
Jeet Heer's writing about comics is described as ingenious and imaginative and he joins us on the phone from Toronto.
Bartholomew Roberts: King of the Caribbean Read Transcript
02/07/2007
Pet parrots, excessive drinking, skull and cross-bone flags -- these are all things we associate with pirates but, did you know that in the 18th century when you became a pirate, you had to sign up to special pirate rules, or that there's a tradition of homosexuality within the ranks of pirating?
Well, Bartholomew Roberts raided 400 boats in his short career as a pirate in the Atlantic from 1719-1722 but, unlike the classic image we have of pirates, he didn't drink, gamble or carouse with women. Richard Sanders is a pirate historian and he's written about this disciplinarian pirate in his book If A Pirate I Must Be: The True Story of Bartholomew Roberts, King of the Caribbean.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Richard Sanders about the allure of pirating for the common man.
David Crystal's By Hook or By Crook
28/06/2007
Did you know that the survey of bird names done in Yorkshire in the 1950s found local words for starling from the coast to inland as diverse as: jibby - jippy - shippy - sheppy - shabby - cheppy? These tales and more are shared by one of the world's foremost experts on language, Professor David Crystal in his latest book By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English.
David Crystal was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to the English language over 10 years ago, and is the author of many books exploring the way we use words. By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English starts off as a search for English accents in Wales, and ends up almost everywhere else.
David Crystal joins us from Hertfordshire, where he is on a book tour.
Sanskrit texts for all
26/06/2007
The Clay Sanskrit Library is the brainchild and heart's desire of investment banker John Clay. It aims to produce bi-lingual volumes of Sanskrit literature, with the original Sanskrit text printed in Roman script on the left-hand page and a modern English translation opposite. This way poetry, drama, satire and epic works will be brought to the general reader.
Greg Bailey is Reader in Sanskrit in the Asian Studies Program at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and is translating Sanskrit for the Clay Sanskrit Library project.
Eliot Weinberger: An Elemental Thing
01/06/2007
American essayist and translator Eliot Weinberger joins the Book Show at the Sydney Writers' Festival. He is the author of three books of literary essays: Works on Paper, Outside Stories, and Karmic Traces; and a collection of political articles, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles – all published by New Directions.
Known for his innovative approach to the essay, Weinberger in his latest collection, An Elemental Thing, has turned his attention to the timeless subjects of astronomy, archaeology and literature, and includes a biography of the prophet Muhammad.
Mike Davis's history of car bombs
28/05/2007
Mike Davis is an urban theorist and is professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine. He first shot to fame in the early 90s with an analysis of the urban politics of Los Angeles in his book, City of Quartz. He has since written many books that build on the theme of cities, urban decay, surveillance and ecological disaster.
His latest book is all about the car bomb and it's called Buda's Wagon: A Short History of the Car Bomb. In it he chronicles the devastating impact of the car bomb from Saigon to Lebanon, trying to come to terms with how this low-tech weapon has brought established armies to their knees. The first known case of a car bomb was on Wall Street, New York in 1920 and the culprit was – most likely – the Italian anarchist Mario Buda.
For Mike Davis, the proliferation of the car bomb goes hand-in-hand with what he calls the militarisation of public space. In classic Davis doomsday language, he calls the car bomb the 'poor man's airforce'.
Bird watching with Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson Read Transcript
20/05/2007
Today, Ramona Koval presents an event from the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal, with Canadian husband-and-wife team Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, who are both authors and both avid bird-watchers. They speak of their wonder and intense involvement with the life of birds, and with birds' relationships to humans.
One of the most exquisite books to appear on our shelves in recent times has been a lovingly crafted collection of stories and images, poems and observations, myths and science; all gathered together as The Bedside Book Of Birds: An Avian Miscellany with introductions to each chapter by Graeme Gibson.
Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson have been named joint honorary president of the Rare Bird Division of BirdLife international – an appointment which caused Margaret to describe them as 'the William and Mary of Orange of Birding'.
Noah Richler's Literary Atlas of Canada
17/05/2007
Writer and broadcaster Noah Richler is this year's winner of the British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for This is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada. The jury for the prize described it as a window into Candian writing in the present day. Ramona Koval brings you her chat with Noah Richler at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal.
Bird watching with Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson Read Transcript
15/05/2007
Today, Ramona Koval presents an event from the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal, with Canadian husband-and-wife team Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, who are both authors and both avid bird-watchers. They speak of their wonder and intense involvement with the life of birds, and with birds' relationships to humans.
One of the most exquisite books to appear on our shelves in recent times has been a lovingly crafted collection of stories and images, poems and observations, myths and science; all gathered together as The bedside book of cirds: an avian miscellany with introductions to each chapter by Graeme Gibson.
Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson have been named joint honorary president of the Rare Bird Division of BirdLife international – an appointment which caused Margaret to describe them as 'the William and Mary of Orange of Birding'.
Publishing Gallipoli
11/05/2007
We take a look at a publishing phenomenon: why every year around April it seems Australian bookshops are brimming with books on one particular subject, Gallipoli. Anzac Day in the new millennium is bigger than ever, there's an avid readership out there, and Australian publishers are cashing in.
But what do we get out of telling and re-telling the story? How has the story changed across the generations? What's the contemporary meaning of the Anzac story? And why are young people turning out in droves at Dawn Services and making the pilgrimage to Anzac Cove in Turkey?
Are we grasping icons of nationalism against the tide of globalisation; a kind of identity reaction to the fear that we will lose cultural distinction as the world becomes homogenised?
John Pilger Read Transcript
29/04/2007
Today, Ramona speaks to a writer who has been called a lank-haired Australian Messiah, the only man who cuts through the lies of the corporate media to bring The Truth. He's been called a lot of other less positive things by his detractors. And he has many.
Multi-award-winning war correspondent, broadcaster, filmmaker and writer John Pilger has a new book titled Freedom Next Time and, later this year, a new film, The War On Democracy, will be in Australian cinemas.
More than just recipes - Claudia Roden and the food and culture of the Middle East
29/04/2007
"When I was a child in Egypt", Claudia Roden writes in her latest book, Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, "Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, and the mountain resorts of Lebanon were our Switzerland. People went there to recuperate." In this enchanting book, Claudia Roden returns to the countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Morocco in search of new and old recipes and to find out how cooking has evolved since she first introduced us to these cuisines in the 1960s. The result is a tribute to the different culinary histories and contemporary food of these fascinating countries, from the mezze dishes of Turkey and the sweet pastries of Lebanon to the unmistakable flavours and spices of Morocco. Claudia's books are more than collections of recipes: they are evocative books full of stories and memories, histories of the people and cultures she meets along the way.
Roden, who describes herself as "both Arab and Jew", was born to a cosmopolitan Jewish family in Cairo, where she grew up eating - and questioning the origin of - food from all over the Middle East. She began by collating recipes at a young age from everybody she met, from family members to virtual strangers. "Food was," she explains, "a way of re-connecting with my culture - my lost heritage. And the discovery of a 13th century manuscript in the British Library eventually led to my interest in food sociology and anthropology."
Today we hear Claudia Roden recorded at the last Edinburgh International Book Festival.
More than just recipes: Claudia Roden and the food and culture of the Middle East
27/04/2007
'When I was a child in Egypt', Claudia Roden writes in her latest book, Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, 'Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East, and the mountain resorts of Lebanon were our Switzerland. People went there to recuperate.'
In this enchanting book, Claudia Roden returns to the countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Morocco in search of new and old recipes and to find out how cooking has evolved since she first introduced us to these cuisines in the 1960s. The result is a tribute to the different culinary histories and contemporary food of these fascinating countries, from the mezze dishes of Turkey and the sweet pastries of Lebanon to the unmistakable flavours and spices of Morocco. Claudia's books are more than collections of recipes: they are evocative books full of stories and memories, histories of the people and cultures she meets along the way.
Roden, who describes herself as 'both Arab and Jew', was born to a cosmopolitan Jewish family in Cairo, where she grew up eating – and questioning the origin of – food from all over the Middle East. She began by collating recipes at a young age from everybody she met, from family members to virtual strangers. 'Food was,' she explains, 'a way of re-connecting with my culture – my lost heritage. And the discovery of a 13th century manuscript in the British Library eventually led to my interest in food sociology and anthropology.'
Today we hear Claudia Roden recorded at the last Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The examined life
25/04/2007
Biography and storytelling are brought to life in a discussion about the skills required to be a good observer of life. Earlier this year we heard Robert Dessaix on observation, wisdom and narrative. He was one of the speakers at The Examined Life at the State Library of NSW. Today we bring you more from The Examined Life, titled 'The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion, The Writer, The Writing and the Narrative Powers of Transformation', in which the speakers were Alice Spigelman and Arnold Zable. First we hear from Dr Vera Ranki, from The Examined Life Institute, who chaired the event and is the author of The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion.
Mark Vernon's Philosophy of Friendship (repeat) Read Transcript
22/04/2007
What is friendship? What is its nature and what are its rules? If there is an art to friendship, what can philosophy teach us about it? London-based writer and former Church of England priest Mark Vernon takes his questions about friendship to philosophy's great thinkers from Plato to Neitzche, in a search for the things that thwart friendship and-or help it thrive.
Mark Vernon joins us today from the studios of Radio Television Hong Kong and is speaking to the Book Show's Rhiannon Brown.
(First broadcast 4/3/2007)
The Dangerous Book For Boys: Conn Iggulden (repeat) Read Transcript
19/04/2007
Now I'm going to talk to the men out there (although I suspect a lot of women will relate to this as well). How many of you have fond memories of a childhood full of books that told you how to make things, how to do things that were really fun, told you ripping yarns -- Boys Own Annuals, Eagle Comics, Coles Funny Picture Books?
(First broadcast 28/2/2007)
The Book of General Ignorance: review (repeat) Read Transcript
17/04/2007
There are thousands of books out there in the stores, and from time to time The Book Show scans some of the counters for strange and interesting ones. The Book of General Ignorance was picked up by Radio National's Kirsten Garrett. Hear her review.
Women and publishing
11/04/2007
After all the gains for feminism in the last 30 years, it might surprise you that women are still under-represented in the book publishing world.
A new study in the United States called Women and Books 2007 is looking into why women's non-fiction writing is not seen in the best-seller lists as often as men's.
Jan King has developed this study to look at the gender imbalance in publishing and she spoke to the Book Show on the phone from California.
Rex Butler reviews Modernism and Australia
09/04/2007
Modernism is said to have come to Australia a little late, perhaps some time around the First World War. The University of Melbourne's Miegunyah Press has recently put out an anthology taking up the story of the arrival and reception of Modernism in Australia.
Modernism and Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967, edited by the curator Ann Stephen and the academics Andrew McNamara and Philip Goad, assembles a vast array of writings treating not only the visual arts, but architecture and design (both commercial and industrial) more generally.
The University of Queensland's Rex Butler reviews it for the Book Show.
David Batstone and modern-day slavery
09/04/2007
While the world celebrates the bi-centenary of the abolition of the slave trade in England, in his new book Not for Sale: The return of the global slave trade and how we can fight it, ethicist David Batstone writes about a new generation of abolitionists.
David Batstone is Professor of Ethics at the University of San Francisco, and as a journalist and businessman, he promotes ethical buiness practice and corporate culture. Recently, he has been touring Australia with World Vision's 'Stop the Traffic' campaign.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to David Batstone in Melbourne about his book Not For Sale.
Calum's Road: Roger Hutchinson
08/04/2007
Some time in the 1950s (we can't be sure exactly when), a shy, unassuming, but articulate Scotsman called Calum MacLeod left his crofter's cottage early one morning, with a wheelbarrow, a pickaxe, a shovel and a crowbar. He walked some miles south of his home on the wild, beautiful and tiny Hebridean island of Raasay and he started to build a road.
This moment was the beginning of a remarkable achievement by one man, a feat that took more than 10 years to complete, and one that's entered the realm of Scottish, British, even European legend.
But this extraordinary act was not meant as some great theatrical flourish. It was in fact the last gasp of defiance in the face of terrible treatment meted out to many generations of traditional residents of Raasay (and many other remote islands and regions of Scotland). These were acts of forced removal and transportation by wealthy landowners in the 19th century and, more recently, disregard by governments and their agencies resulting in the almost total depopulation of the islands.
Journalist and author Roger Hutchinson first encountered the tough and charming Calum MacLeod during the 1960s. But his book Calum's Road is more than just a tribute to this one man. It's an eloquent telling of the history of Raasay's people, of the cruelties meted out to these crofting communities, and of the road that is now something of a shrine to engineers and land-artists and awe-struck people from all over the world.
Roger Hutchinson spoke to The Book Show's Michael Shirrefs from the BBC studios in the Scottish city of Inverness, and he describes the landscape that produced this story.
Calum's Road: Roger Hutchinson Read Transcript
04/04/2007
Journalist and author Roger Hutchinson first encountered the tough and charming Calum MacLeod during the 1960s. But his book Calum's Road is more than just a tribute to this one man. It's an eloquent telling of the history of Raasay's people, of the cruelties meted out to these crofting communities, and of the road that is now something of a shrine to engineers and land-artists and awe-struck people from all over the world.
Roger Hutchinson spoke to The Book Show's Michael Shirrefs from the BBC studios in the Scottish city of Inverness, and he describes the landscape that produced this story.
John Pilger Read Transcript
02/04/2007
This morning, Ramona speaks to a writer who has been called a lank-haired Australian Messiah, the only man who cuts through the lies of the corporate media to bring The Truth. He's been called a lot of other less positive things by his detractors. And he has many.
Multi-award-winning war correspondent, broadcaster, filmmaker and writer John Pilger has a new book titled Freedom Next Time and, later this year, a new film, The War On Democracy, will be in Australian cinemas.
Felipe Fernández-Arnesto: the Idea of 'Nation'
30/03/2007
Today we talk about nations – sociologists call them 'vertical communities', which is an interesting image. But what do you think the concept 'nation' means? How does one go about thinking of a description? Are nations something testable and measurable – like the patch of land we inhabit and make our life on, within its designated borders? Or are nations more of an idea, an emotional or even mystical notion, to which we attach and derive our sense of belonging? And if that's the case what's happening to the concept of nations in our increasingly globalised world?
Some meaty questions there, and who better to explore the idea of nations and where they might be heading in the future than a historian? One who might look at past trends to determine where we might be heading in the future.
Felipe Fernández-Arnesto is a British/Spanish historian, and he is a man who moves with startling ease across large intellectual landscapes. By day, he is the Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary University of London, and since 2005 has been Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at Tufts University; and is a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford.
He is a British historian on a truly grand scale, impressive not only for the volume, but the range of his output; including the books Millenium: A history of the Last 1000 Years, A History of Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, and Civilisations. He has also written a history of food, and a history of the world. And in his most recent book he's explored the idea of discovery – of how civilisations converge and diverge.
Filipe rejects the idea of progressive history. He says he wants history to be scientifically informed and generously defined. He's not a relativist or a postmodernist but a man who believes in objective historical reality, which is, in itself, quite a bold stance these days.
He has described the future as 'the past we have not experienced yet', and today he's going to explain why, according to the normal rules of futurology, nations should disappear from the 21st century lexicon ... and why they wont!
Here's the flamboyant Felipe Fernández-Arnesto recorded last August addressing an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
A big book about apples
26/03/2007
In Australia, apples are almost synonymous with Tasmania, and now a book on its contribution to agricultural history has won the University of Tasmania's prize for Best Book by a Tasmanian Publisher—awarded as part of the Tasmanian Book Prize celebrations. The book is called The Art of Apple Branding: Australian Apple Case Labels and the Industry since 1788. It's a gorgeous production, highlighting the rich and colourful artwork that adorned apple boxes and labels as far back as 1788.
Chris Cowles, the co-author of this prize-winning book joins us to discuss the production of this book which became a labour of love.
Writing of murder in Holland
26/03/2007
Featuring the authors of two books on murder in Holland: a Dutch thriller, now published in English translation as The Dinner Club, in which there is a strong resonance with the kind of fear that the people of The Netherlands are still trying to deal with after the two assassinations that have occurred there in recent years; as well as the true-crime investigation of those assassinations, called Murder in Amsterdam, by Ian Buruma.
Australian gothic fiction
23/03/2007
The underbelly of the Australian psyche will be exposed today in our panel discussion on Australian gothic literature. From the early colonial writers like Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson, to Elizabeth Jolley and Peter Carey, the Australian landscape has been transformed into a menacing character in gothic tales of colonisation and displacement.
Worldwide reading in memory of Anna Politkovskaya
20/03/2007
Over the past year, the plight of writers and journalists, working under threat of violence and death, has been brought to the fore, with the very conspicuous murders of Russian journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya and the Armenian/Turkish newspaper editor Hrant Dink. And just last Friday, we heard of the suspicious death of another Russian journalist Ivan Safronov. While these types of murders are nothing new, they do tell us that the stakes can get very high, if you try to report the truth and threaten people in power. Ivan Safronov had been working on some damning exposes of failures within the Russian military, and of course Anna Politkovskaya had been reporting on the brutality of Russia's protracted military campaign in Chechan.
So to honour the courage of journalists and writers, a worldwide reading of the work of Anna Politkovskaya is being held today - organised by the Berlin-based Peter Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics, in conjunction with International PEN. The Australian readings have been organised by the Melbourne chapter of International PEN are to be held this evening (Tuesday 20th March 2007) at 7.30 at La Mama at the Carlton Courthouse. Everyone in Melbourne is welcome, but for those of you who can't attend, we've got an excerpt from A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya. The reader is Jema Stellato Pledger.
The art of Factory Records
16/03/2007
Many of you (those who were growing up in the 1970s and 80s) will have found it hard to avoid the music that emerged from the northern English town of Manchester. Bands like Joy Division and New Order and The Happy Mondays were part of a musical, and artistic, revolution from the late 70s through to the early 90s. The focus and perhaps the origin of this revolution (and the subject of a funny, chaotic film a few years ago called 24 hour party people) was Factory Records and a nightclub called The Hacienda.
Tony Wilson was the person with the vision of a record label without contracts, and where the art on the record cover was as important as the music. Initially, he teamed up with Alan Erasmus and sole designer Peter Saville, and together they forged an approach to the music business that set the world alight.
A decade and a half after the label folded in the early 90s, an Australian academic, graphic designer and Factory music fan, Matthew Robertson, has written and compiled Factory Records: the complete graphic album.
Radio National's Tim Ritchie spoke to Matthew Robertson on a return trip to Australia a few months ago and asked him how he and his partner's appreciation for Manchester's music and design turned into a book.
The Dangerous Book For Boys: Conn Iggulden Read Transcript
28/02/2007
Now I'm going to talk to the men out there (although I suspect a lot of women will relate to this as well). How many of you have fond memories of a childhood full of books that told you how to make things, how to do things that were really fun, told you ripping yarns -- Boys Own Annuals, Eagle Comics, Coles Funny Picture Books?
Well what seems like a distant memory has been revived in a new book, titled The Dangerous Book For Boys, written by two brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden. This book is filled with the most extraordinary mix of 'things you really ought to know' (poetry, grammer, Latin, history, first aid), and 'things you, perhaps, ought not to know -- but are exceedingly fun'. Having said that, there is nothing in this book that should raise the eyebrow of any parent. The fun described is that sort of lo-tech, quaintly nostalgic mix of billy-carts and tree houses and juggling and skipping stones.
The other remarkable thing about this book is that, while it's been sitting at the top of the UK's non-fiction bestseller list, Conn Iggulden's had another book at the top of the fiction list. This is unprecedented. Conn is best known for his epic series of novels based on the life of Julius Caesar. His lastest novel, Wolf of the Plains, is the first in a new series based on the life of Genghis Khan.
But it's good, old-fashioned fun that we're interested in today, and so Michael Shirrefs decided to do some serious research with The Dangerous Book For Boys, making paper planes and water-bombs -- and then he asked Conn Iggulden if the neatest trick was getting two books to sumultaneously top the UK lists?
Wendy Wagner - Rescuing Science From Politics
19/02/2007
We haven't covered many books about science in recent months, and today we'll look at one that canvasses one of the most important issues in science -- the very vexed and sensitive point at which it interfaces with politics and business. You may remember that a year or so ago, an open letter, signed by some 60 or more of America's leading scientists, was published, accusing the Bush administration of not merely shopping for research that they liked, but of in fact doctoring research findings, to reinforce both policy and ideology.
So we thought we'd look at a new book called Rescuing Science from Politics -- Regulation and Distortion of Scientific Research. The contributors are many of the leading names in law and science from across America; people who are concerned that lawyers are increasingly abusing the court processes in efforts to undermine, weaken, and discredit scientists and research that may have an impact on business interests. Radio National's Kirsten Garrett spoke to one of the editors, Professor Wendy Wagner.
Liberal Jews and anti-semitism and Norman Mailer's Hitler novel
07/02/2007
Our regular US commentator and editor of the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers, discusses the bitter controversy simmering away in the United States linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism, which has reportedly entangled government officials, academics and other opinion-makers including the American historian Tony Judt and former president Jimmy Carter.
We ruminate on 'poetic truth' in Norman Mailer's The Castle in the Forest, a biographical novel about Hitler as a young boy. The narrator in Mailer's book -- his first novel in a decade -- is a demon posing as one of Adolf Hitler's SS intelligence officers.
Plus botanical classification and the sex life of trees -- who would have thought mushrooms are closer relatives to humans than to the cauliflower!
In memory of Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007)
30/01/2007
On The Book Show, we note the passing, last week at the age of 74, of the remarkable Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who made a career of reporting from the third world where he was sent by the Polish News Agency he worked for, covering the African continent for over 40 years including 27 revolutions and coups.
He had acquired an almost celebrity status in Poland, where his books were read as thinly disguised commentaries on communist Poland. They included The Emperor (1978), on the fall of that extraordinary figure Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. (It was his first book to be translated into English, and Jonathan Miller adapted it for the Royal Court Theatre in 1985.)
Another Day of Life (1976), was a unique and closely observed account of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. Shah of Shahs (1982), was about the last days of the Shah of Persia, He wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union in Imperium (1993), essays and reportage on the Soviet Union, and five volumes of essays and poems, Lapidarium. A sixth was due to be published soon.
He was admired by writers like Salman Rushdie and John Updike for his lyrical prose and was regarded as a major figure in the world of literary non-fiction where he used metaphor in a way that some journalists have found closer to magic realism than to reportage.
Ramona Koval spoke to Ryszard Kapuscinsky in 1995, and she asked him about his passion for Africa, a place he returned to again and again. He described it as an African fever.
Malcolm Fraser launches Reflected Light Read Transcript
17/01/2007
This collection of reflections, evocations, commentary, criticism and humour, called Reflected Light, was launched by one of our great public speakers, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, in Melbourne last year.
