Past Programs
Books - 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.
Historic recording of WB Yeats
27/12/2006
A 1932 recording of the Nobel prize-winning poet WB Yeats, including a reading of his poem 'The Lake of Innisfree'.
Writers on writing: Kate Grenville, Geoffrey Atherden and Mark Tredinnick
24/12/2006
In the newly released The Little Red Writing Book: A Manual for Fiction Writers, Mark Tredinnick says, 'When you write, you talk on paper. When it's good you sing.' So today on The Book Show we're going to find out how to sing. In other words what makes good writing? How is it done? What are the tricks of the trade? We're take a behind the scenes look at the writing process and examining two very different writers manuals with three very different writers. And to help us we have Mark Tredinnick in Canberra, and in Sydney, Geoffrey Atherden and Kate Grenville.
A discussion of a year in the book industry
15/12/2006
It's Friday, and as the relentless approach of Christmas catches us like rabbits in the headlights, we think we should sit back, eat a few carrots and contemplate how the book world has been travelling over the past year, and maybe we can get a bit of a glimpse, beyond the headlights and into 2007.
Ramona Koval is joined in the studio by some very handsome rabbits indeed...all of whom have become familiar voices over the year on The Book Show...and these rabbits are armed with good sunglasses so they won't get dazzled as the seasonal juggernaut approaches.
Hilary McPhee is a writer, editor and publisher.
Andrew Wilkins is the publisher of Australia's Bookseller & Publisher magazine and the Weekly Book Newsletter.
And Henry Rosenbloom runs Scribe Publishing.
Writers on writing: Kate Grenville, Geoffrey Atherden and Mark Tredinnick
08/12/2006
In the newly released The Little Red Writing Book: A Manual for Fiction Writers, Mark Tredinnick says, 'When you write, you talk on paper. When it's good you sing.' So today on The Book Show we're going to find out how to sing. In other words what makes good writing? How is it done? What are the tricks of the trade? We're take a behind the scenes look at the writing process and examining two very different writers manuals with three very different writers. And to help us we have Mark Tredinnick in Canberra, and in Sydney, Geoffrey Atherden and Kate Grenville.
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.
Janette Turner Hospital: Rooted Cosmopolitanism
24/11/2006
What is Rooted Cosmopolitanism and what does it have to do with medieval literature and what does it have to do with contemporary Australian fiction?
Rooted Cosmopolitanism is the subject of Janette Turner Hospital's address which launched this year's Byron Bay Writers' Festival. And it is also, as it turns out, a phrase which describes herself.
Janette Turner Hospital is one of Australia's literary diaspora. She currently resides in the US, where she's the Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. But Janette has been a traveller since birth. She's perhaps best known for her most recent work Due Preparations For The Plague, which is actually a way into writing about the subject of terrorism. However, she clearly loves thinking and speaking about wanderers, as well as wandering herself. In this particular literary excursion she begins with the writings of the first millennium and progresses to March, the novel about the America Civil War which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for Geraldine Brooks, and along the way she follows the flight of a sparrow across a hall.
Robert Dessaix talks about Twilight of Love
22/11/2006
This week we've started a new First Person reading – Robert Dessaix is reading Twilight of Love: Travels With Turgenev. We wanted to talk to Robert about his relationship to the life of this Russian writer.
Robert first read Turgenev as a youth. For this book he's travelled to the places in Europe where the great Russian writer put down roots. He's trying to glimpse this 19th century Russian aristocrat whose ideas, about love in particular, have been turning themselves over inside Robert for most of his life. On the Book Show, we've tried to speak with our First Person writers if we could over the year, and Robert joined Ramona from the ABC's Hobart studios.
Damian Marrett: White Lies
22/11/2006
Today we glimpse an insider's view of the seedy side of life. It's a story of drug dealers, fake identies and covert operations. Damian Marrett is a former undercover cop who worked for six years with the Victoria Police, playing dozens of specialised roles in which he risked his life for some of the biggest drug busts in Australian law enforcement history.
Damian also worked as a consultant for the TV drama series Stingers, and is the author of the bestselling book Undercover. His new book White Lies takes up where Undercover left off, telling more tales from his days as a covert operative in the Victorian police force, where bending the truth is all part of the job.
Damian Marrett reminisces with Lyn Gallacher about his former glory days.
Andrew Wilkins on the role of the publisher
21/11/2006
Personnel changes are routine in the publishing industry. The ebb and flow of publicists and administration staff happens at a high rate. Often people move around from publishing firm to publishing firm. But as you get into the ranks of editors, the churn rate is usually less vigorous.
Editors and publishers are more emblematic of the companiesthey work for – their skill and literary eye define the style and direction of a particular publishing house. So the news in recent weeks of two high-level departures from Random House raised many eyebrows.
Long-time senior editor and now executive publisher Jane Palfreyman will depart after 12 years with the firm, along with her colleague, executive publisher for Random House's Transworld division, Fiona Henderson. And in the Age newspaper, literary editor Jason Steger said that many industry pundits were pointing the finger at Random's publishing director Jill Baker, appointed to the job earlier this year. They suggested that her background, as a deputy editor of the Age and as group publisher of magazines at Australian Consolidated Press, shouldn't have recommended her to such a crucial book publishing role.
But what do publishers actually do? How important are they in defining a publishing imprint? And where do they go when they move on?
Andrew Wilkins is himself a publisher – he heads Bookseller and Publisher magazine and the online Weekly Book Newsletter, Australia's two major publishing-industry journals – and he discusses these questions with Ramona Koval.
Geoff Page reviews My Tanka Diary by Kawano Yuko Read Transcript
24/10/2006
Now to the work of Japanese tanka poet Kawano Yuko, and Amelia Fielden's translation of her collection, My Tanka Diary. Poetry reviewer Geoff Page reads one of the tankas from the collection.
Geoff Page - 80 Great Poems From Chaucer To Now
17/10/2006
Listeners to the Book Show and before that to Books & Writing from the mid-nineties onwards would be familiar with the voice of my next guest. Geoff Page is a poet and reviewer who has reviewed many new books of Australian poetry for us for years. But I don't think I have even had a conversation with him on the radio before, and the occasion for this one is the publication of his book 80 Great Poems From Chaucer To Now. In which he has developed a series of articles on classic poems in English which he's been writing every two or three weeks for the Canberra Times since 2003. As he says in his introduction 'most poets are concerned with more than self-expression. Consciously or unconsciously, they aspire to join a tradition that in English goes back at least as far as Chaucer. A working awareness of this tradition is not something quickly attained, but is is essential to any poet who takes his or her art seriously. Its is likewise for the reader of poetry.'
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.
Qiu Xiaolong, Chinese crime writer
04/10/2006
Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong uses real cases as the basic plot for his crime novels. But they are unquestionably novels, and today we are going to meet Chief Inspector Chen in Xiaolong's latest book.
'A Chinese Recipe For Murder' was the name given to the session at the Brisbane Writers' Festival where Xialong and I met.
Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai. And has lived in the United States since 1989—in other words, since the Tiananmen Square massacre, which features strongly in his writing; it was because of the massacre that he couldn't return home. As well as detective fiction, Xiaolong publishes poetry, translations and literary criticism. The two books in the Chief Inspector Chen series, which are available in Australia, are Death of a red heroine and A loyal character dancer.
As you'll hear it's a very stylised form of writing, which is interesting, because the style is a Western one in an Asian setting. But this is just one of the many cultural clashes. The summary executions are somewhat chilling and the institutionalised police and political corruption are troubling—but the food is great.
And so that is where we began our conversation.
Qiu Xiaolong reads from his book Death of a red heroine at the Brisbane Writers' Festival. It's a domestic scene, in a typical Chinese household with a typical Chinese couple: Detective Yu (who's Chief Inspector Chen's partner) and his wife. The couple have just finished a crab dinner.
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.
Kate Bochner reviews Paulo Coelho's Like the Flowing River Read Transcript
02/10/2006
The best-selling Brazilian writer, Paulo Coelho has a new book out, a collection of essays published under the title, Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections.
You may be familiar with Paulo Coelho's novels—he's published eight, including The Alchemist, Veronika Decides To Die and The Devil and Miss Pym, as well as The Pilgrimage, an account of his walk along the road to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, a popular pilgrimage for the world's Catholics, and The Manual of the Warrior of Light, which is an outline of his personal philosophy,
Here are Kate Bochner's thoughts on Paulo Coelho's latest book.
Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and James Griffin on all the Beats
24/09/2006
As part of our ongoing tribute to the year 1956 we're now going take a look at the poem that changed America. This year is the 50th anniversary of the first publication, by City Lights, of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. And it still sells a bomb. In the 50 years since its first publication, this little chapbook has never been out of print, and the poem Howl is considered to be a literary classic. It's been translated into more than two dozen languages, is anthologised in high school and college text books worldwide, and a copy from the first print run is now worth several thousand dollars—even though originally it sold for 75 cents.
Allen Ginsberg's epic 1956 poem, Howl
22/09/2006
As part of our ongoing tribute to the year 1956 we're now going take a look at the poem that changed America. This year is the 50th anniversary of the first publication, by City Lights, of Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. And it still sells a bomb. In the 50 years since its first publication, this little chapbook has never been out of print, and the poem Howl is considered to be a literary classic. It's been translated into more than two dozen languages, is anthologised in high school and college text books worldwide, and a copy from the first print run is now worth several thousand dollars—even though originally it sold for 75 cents.
Crime writer Peter Robinson
22/09/2006
A recent visitor to these shores was the very successful English crime-writer Peter Robinson, who despite having based himself in Canada for many years now, still sets his crime series in the UK - crafted around the character of Detective Inspector Banks.
But writing a series of this sort raises all sorts of questions about the development of a set of characters and procedures, the commitment of an audience to him.
Radio National's Kate Evans caught up with Peter Robinson during his time in Australia.
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
17/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Ĺsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
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.
Hilary McPhee on the judging of literary awards
12/09/2006
All over the country, people are sitting in judgment on books by strangers and by their friends, their enemies – and even their friends' children. Hilary McPhee talks about being a judge for a literary prize. What happens after the boxes of books have been delivered and the task of judging and negotiating with fellow judges begins?
Norwegian star writer Asne Seierstad on the legacy of the Balkan war
11/09/2006
Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian writer and newspaper and television journalist who was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
You may already know her as the author of her bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul. In that book she related her experiences in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime. She met a bookseller there and asked to write about his family. She moved into his flat for three months to collect material from the 12 family members who lived there. Her portrait of the family patriarch was not flattering, and he threatened to sue her following the publication of the book.
She has also written of her time in Iraq in A Hundred and One Days: A Bagdad Journal. But in the interview you are about to hear, recorded last month at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're talking about another book, set in a complex political and moral landscape. It's called With Their Backs To The World: Portrait From Serbia. The book itself has an interesting history. It is an updated version of her first book, and it's fascinating, not only because it's a forensic portrait of a cross-section of Serbian characters (and I say characters because she has the novelist's touch for description and story), but also because she visits these people again and again, and that's unusual, for a correspondent like Ĺsne Seierstad, to maintain relationships long after the journalistic caravan has moved on, as it were.
Review of Life, End Of, by Christine Brooke-Rose (transcript available) Read Transcript
11/09/2006
Christine Brooke-Rose has been writing experimental fiction for over 40 years. She grew up in England, worked in Intelligence at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, and moved to Paris in the late 60s where she taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes. As well as writing novels, Brooke-Rose is the author of a study of Ezra Pound and several works of narrative theory. Her fiction, known for its linguistic and erudite game-playing, is highly regarded by a small but devoted group of readers. Now in her 80s, Brooke-Rose has written what is said to be her final work, entitled Life, End Of, a novel concerning the trials and reflections of an ageing female writer whose ultimate resemblance to Brooke-Rose herself remains unclear.
Simon Cooper is here to tell us how this polymathic and highly original writer tackles the subjects of old age and imminent death.
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.
Simon Armitage (Edinburgh International Book Festival)
01/09/2006
To Edinburgh now, to an evening in which Simon Armitage delighted the audience with readings from his latest collection. Through them we get a glimmer of some of the varied subjects that caught his attention – and then he'll settle in for a talk with me.
Simon Armitage – poet, novelist, and librettist for the Edinburgh International Festival Opera The Assassin Tree – is originally from West Yorkshire, which you can hear in his speech and in the language of some of his poems. And then again, he has written his version of Homer's Odyssey too – a gorgeous take on that fundamental poem of human storytelling – which started out as a play for BBC Radio. His new book of poems is Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid.
2006 Byron Bay Writers' Festival: Max Gillies launches 50 Golden Years of the Chaser 1955-2005
10/08/2006
The grand master of political satire, Max Gillies, launches a new annual by The Chaser, the group who brought you CNNNN and The Chaser Decides and the current The Chaser's War on Everything.
Rehaashing all the important stories ('World Trade Centre Janitor Declares: Best Sickie Ever' and 'Bali trial mix-up: Vanessa Amorosi executed'); reminiscing over their old gift guides (including such favourites as Barry Jones' Diary); and looking back on Latham's pancreas and Beazley's ticker, 50 Golden Years of The Chaser makes for nostalgic reading.
The Chaser's tips on how to ruin a writers' festival
10/08/2006
Most people attending writers' festivals go to feed their love of literature. But a select few attend because they love themselves. Some are old and lonely. Some are young and angry. And some are paranoid, deluded maniacs in desperate need of a microphone. If you'd like to be one of these people all you need to do is follow the Chaser's step-by-step guide to ruining a writers' festival for everyone. You can, in the question-and-answer session, turn a lively debate into a slightly unpleasant waste of time.
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?
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
16/05/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
The history of reportage (transcript available) Read Transcript
07/05/2006
It is one of ironies of conflict, that while a country might win a war of weapons abroad, it could just as easily lose the war of words at home. The flow of information in times of national stress can become heavily contested and contentious, with the machinery of propaganda attempting to undermine, intimidate or block the engines of independent journalism.
So at a time when these issues are close to the minds of both government and the media, what can we learn from the past? Do we understand the role of the journalist? Is the idea of independence in the media over-rated or under-valued? And could we lose our access to voices of truth, simply through carelessness?
To discuss these crucial issues, Ramona Koval has invited a couple of experts on these topics ... Oxford Professor of English John Carey, who is editor of The Faber Book of Reportage, and Martin Flanagan, who is a writer and journalist of many years.
And Radio National's Tony Barrell speaks to UK writer and BBC documentary-maker Nicholas Rankin about the life of journalist GL Steer. George Steer was the person who alerted the world to the bombing of Guernica by the Germans at the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Nicholas Rankin's book, Telegram from Guernica: The Extraordinary Life Of George Steer, War Correspondent, tells us much about the pressures and obstacles that journalists have always faced when trying to report the truth.
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.
Danny Katz: M.O.T.H.E.R
27/04/2006
Now to someone for whom the job of the writer is somewhat less profound, but just as funny. Here's Danny Katz, columnist for The Age and The West Australian, with his tribute to the most wonderful word in the world (apart from spleen, knuckle, and squeegee).
Richard Hawke: Speak Of The Devil
23/04/2006
In the realms of exciting genre fiction, most people would concede that, while the Brits have always had a great line in police and spy stories, America can probably lay claim to the best in gumshoe icons ... those film-noir private eyes with a vernacular that is dark, seductive and irreverent.
Of course, the modern private eye may well have more to contend with than just marital infidelities and the occasional messy murder. In the anxieties that have gripped post-9/11 America, where everyone seems to be spying or being spied upon, the waters are much muddier for private detectives ... the stakes seem to be higher, conspiracy and corruption are more likely to be the objects of investigation, and lines between private eye, FBI and policeman are less clear.
Now enter Fritz Malone, a much updated private detective, with just enough 1940s trench-coat charm to make him sufficiently recognisable and edgy. Fritz is the creation of New York novelist Richard Hawke, whose new novel, Speak Of The Devil, is the first in a series that will unleash this Irish-German gumshoe on New York City.
Before we hear Richard Hawke's conversation with Michael Shirrefs, here he is reading from the start of Speak Of The Devil ...
Culling the bookshelf
21/04/2006
Booklovers, besotted with books, can suffer terrible qualms when it comes to culling the bookshelf. On the dilemma of too many books, Ramona Koval discusses today, getting rid of books or - to put it a little more decorously - managing the bookshelf.
Bartleby & Co, by Enrique Vila-Matas (transcript available)
18/04/2006
Don Anderson recently went to his favourite bookstore to purchase a book for his son, the 'Pure Mathematician', who was reading Calvino, Perec, and Harry Mathews between algorithms. The book was Herman Melville's novella Bartleby, which is an informing presence behind so much modern angst.
While in the store, he wanted to see what they had in stock of William T. Vollmann, whose National Book Award-winning novel, Europe Central, he was reading with a view to reviewing. None. But down among the Vs he saw a slim volume, Bartleby & Co, by one Enrique Vila-Matas. Serendipity.
He discovered that Vila-Matas 'novel' consisted of a brief statement of intention followed by eighty-six footnotes. There is an outbreak of footnote novels in the United States – Nicholson Baker, David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann – but, if one recalled Borges, Hispanic writers were the only begetters of the footnote novel, or footnotes in lieu of novels.
Anderson then recalled that he had on his shelves two books about the bottom of the page; The Footnote: a Curious History by Anthony Grafton (1997) and The Devil's Details: a History of Footnotes by Chuck Zerby (2002), wherein it is asserted, 'the main job of the footnote is to interrupt. Simply interrupt.' Enrique Vila-Matas' Bartleby & Co, it would appear, was Don Anderson's sort of book.
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.
Bem Le Hunte: There, Where the Pepper Grows
22/02/2006
Maria Zijlstra talks to Bem Le Hunte about her second novel, There, Where the Pepper Grows, which is essentially a love story – a kind of 'how to' live love.
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.
