Past Programs
Books - 2008
Montana's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas (Review) Read Transcript
02/12/2008
Enrique Vila-Matas has earned a reputation in Europe as one of Spain's most important living writers. Montano's Malady is the second of his novels to be translated into English. Don Anderson was so impressed by Vila-Matas's earlier book Bartleby & Co that he has read and re-read Montano's Malady for The Book Show. Although the book's described as a 'novel' he suggests it might be more useful to think of Vila-Matas as pioneering a new literary form. Some reviewers have found it hard going, but Don believes it's well worth the effort.
National Poetry Slam
01/12/2008
Literary critic Harold Bloom called it the 'death of art' but to some poets, slamming has given poetry a new life. From its beginning in Chicago in the 1980s, this cabaret style word duel has spread around the world—including to Australia. Since June, performance poets from Broome to Dubbo have competed in slam heats and the finalists are converging on Thursday 4 December at the Sydney Opera House for the Australian Poetry Slam final.
Novel simulations in Second Life
17/11/2008
There's the Charles Dickens theme park, book- inspired computer games and film adaptations of novels like Bladerunner, but to get an immersive experience of a book, some enthusiasts have recreated the settings of their favourite novels in Second Life, an online virtual world. A literary conference in Second Life called 'Stepping into Literature' featured these simulations and librarians, book lovers and academics attended.
A thousand years of The Tale of Genji
13/11/2008
It's believed to be the world's first modern novel, penned a thousand years ago. The Tale of Gengi by Murasaki Shikibu starts when a woman of lower rank in the court gives birth to a son called Genji. He is favoured by the emperor because he's so beautiful, talented and likeable. He goes on to have many love affairs, which allows Murasaki Shikibu to explore ideas of love, court politics, friendship, life and death. Ten centuries on, the popularity and influence of this ancient text has not diminished and this year to honour the millenium of The Tale of Gengi, Japan is celebrating.
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (review)
11/11/2008
Two debut novelists' books made it on to the Booker shortlist this year.
One of them was the winner -- The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and the other one was A Fraction of the Whole by Australian writer Steve Toltz.
His novel is a sprawling black comedy about the Deans, a family of outcasts.
For the Book Show, David Astle reviews A Fraction of the Whole.
American political books for kids
28/10/2008
Putting politics in the mouths of babes is nothing new. The Dr Seuss books have been brimming with political lessons and allegories for decades. But now there's some very different bedtime reading on offer. In the lead-up to next week's US presidential election, partisan authors have been peddling their opposing liberal and conservative views to an audience which is much too young to vote, children. Political propaganda or an early civic lesson? For copyright reasons this story is not available as audio on demand or podcast.
Financial doom and gloom and Frankfurt Book Fair antics
24/10/2008
We talk to writers all the time about their books, but have you thought about how they come to be published, or how international writers' books end up on our shores?
The process of getting books into print in different regions around the world has a lot to do with the wheeling and dealing that goes on at large international book fairs.
It is the 60th anniversary of the Frankfurt Book Fair, which just wrapped recently. Despite the international financial crisis, it's reported as being the biggest ever.
Slightly Foxed with Gail Pirkis
23/10/2008
The British quarterly journal Slightly Foxed was set up partly to celebrate writers and books that are either neglected or out of fashion and partly as a reaction to a book industry that has become somewhat captive to image and marketing. Michael Shirrefs asked editor Gail Pirkis about the ethic of the journal.
Mike Ladd's Transit (review) Read Transcript
22/10/2008
Mike Ladd is the presenter of Radio National's Poetica. He is also a poet in his own right. In the 80s he was part of a group called the Drum Poets who made music from collected objects. He travelled around Africa and recorded Senegalese poets, and he's published six books of poetry, the latest one being the collection Transit.
Poetry reviewer Geoff Page has looked at this collection.
He begins with a reading of one of the poems, called 'Last Thoughts of a Famous Dog'.
Murray Bail's The Pages (review) Read Transcript
21/10/2008
Ten years ago, Murray Bail wrote the internationally acclaimed Eucalyptus.
A decade on, his new offering is The Pages.
It's an intricate story about an enigmatic philospher who dies and leaves his work in-progress in a shed on his family's property in New South Wales.
For the Book Show Geordie Williamson reviewed The Pages.
Espresso Book Machines
20/10/2008
Trying to find a book that's out of print or out of stock can be tricky. But now it can be as easy as getting cash from an ATM. The Espresso Book Machine, capable of printing, trimming and binding a quality paperback book within minutes, has arrived in Australia.
Australian jazz and Indonesian poetry -- Sitok Srengenge and Jan Cornall
15/10/2008
Even though Indonesia is one of Australia's nearest neighbours, there isn't a lot of literary exchange between our countries. But there are pockets of activity bridging this cultural divide.
Jan Cornall is an Australian writer and musician and Sitok Srengenge is a popular Indonesian poet. After meeting at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival they began a collaboration that blends their music and poetry.
Jan created jazz music from Sitok's poetry and the album Singing Srengenge is the result of this collaboration.
Il Gattopardo - The Leopard Read Transcript
09/10/2008
Fifty years ago when an Italian novel appeared describing the life and death of an intellectual Sicilian aristocrat, critics didn't know what to make of it.
Il Gattopardo, which the English-speaking world knows as The Leopard, was attacked almost immediately, with critics dismissing it as either deeply reactionary or anti-Italian. But Italy's reading public was quick to make up its mind, and since then the novel hasn't stopped selling.
10 things about the National Young Writers' Festival
08/10/2008
The National Young Writers' Festival is described as random, emerging, fresh, collaborative, rejuvenatating and DIY.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange went to This is Not Art in Newcastle to report on its 10th anniversary. The writers' festival is part of that broader event.
Herding Kites - 10 years of writing from the National Young Writers' Festival
08/10/2008
Herding Kites is the anthology of writings from a decade of the National Young Writers Festival.
The festival is part of the broader This is Not Art event which includes parallel festivals: Sound Summit, Electrofringe, and Critical Animals.
Each year, poets, graphic novelists, established writers and emerging voices converge in Newcastle in a writers' festival unlike any of the major literary events that happen in the capital cities each year.
Herding Kites features well known authors like Anna Funder and Max Barry but also many unknown writers who go to the festival to share ideas and network...in their own particularly anarchic way.
Michael Williams is the editor of this collection.
Submarine by Joe Dunthorne (review) Read Transcript
08/10/2008
Teen novels with the meerest whiff of teen angst are often promoted as the next Catcher in the Rye.
And yes, Joe Dunthorne's book Submarine has been compared to JD Salinger's classic. Dunthorne wrote it for his creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. He's 26 years old and his main character is Oliver Tait -- he's 15 and is struggling to deal with his parents' failing marriage.
For The Book Show Ryan Paine reviewed Submarine, and doesn't think it lives up to the promise of Catcher in the Rye.
Examining the Booker prize
30/09/2008
How significant are literary prizes? We examine the much-hyped Man Booker Prize, awarded to a novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland. This year's winner will be announced on October 14th and Australia's claiming two writers on the short list, Steve Toltz and Aravind Adiga.
Toad, Mole and Anne of Green Gables turn 100 Read Transcript
29/09/2008
We celebrate the centenary of two books which have had enduring appeal for children and adults: Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery, about plucky, red-haired orphan Anne Shirley, and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, featuring the wonderful animal characters of Mole, Badger, Ratty and Toad of Toad Hall.
The Reading Room installation
18/09/2008
A 'cacophony' of books -- this is how Jayne Dyer describes the door sized photographs in her art exhibition called The Reading Room.
The exhibition is, in part, based on her residency at the historic Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney, where the famous McCleay library began -- and then ended a mere few years later -- in the early days of the colony.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange went to Uber Gallery, a small art space in Melbourne where the installation is on show, where artist Jayne Dyer gave her a tour of The Reading Room.
Anne Fine at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Read Transcript
08/09/2008
English writer Anne Fine was the Children's Laureate a few years ago, but she also writes for adults. She calls her novels for adults sour comedies. At the Edinburgh International Book Festival she spoke to Ramona Koval about the latest of these, Fly In The Ointment.
The role of the literary critic - Daniel Mendelsohn Read Transcript
19/08/2008
This year's Sydney Jewish Writers' Festival has attracted a number of prominent international guests, including leading US writer and critic Daniel Mendelsohn. Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of three books, including The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million in which he investigates the story of what happened to his family during World War Two. He is also a professor of humanities at Bard College and a leading critic, writing regularly for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The Paris Review.
His latest book, just published in the US and due for release here in Australia in a matter of weeks, is a collection of his essays called How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken.
Obscene: the literary world of Barney Rosset
19/08/2008
American entrepreneur and publisher Barney Rosset mounted landmark, and ultimately successful, legal battles for free speech over the right to publish an uncensored version of Lady Chatterley's Lover and over Henry Miller's controversial novel Tropic of Cancer. He introduced Americans to writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter and published many of the writers of the Beat generation, including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Filmmakers Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor have recorded the achievements of this passionate, and at times infamous, crusader for free expression in their documentary Obscene.
Beyond rhyme - the art of writing poetry Read Transcript
14/08/2008
If you ask children what makes something a poem, the chances are they'll tell you that poetry rhymes. That's not necessarily the case of course, but if a piece of writing rhymes then we do tend to call it poetry. So what is the place of rhyme in poems? And what is the relationship between rhyme and other features of poetry, like rhythm? These are questions that interest the noted US poet Susan Stewart, who is also a professor of English at Princeton University.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn Read Transcript
12/08/2008
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died last week aged 89.
The author of a One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, First Circle and many other books, Solzhenitsyn exposed the brutality of the Soviet system to his fellow Russians and to the rest of the world.
To discuss the extraordinary impact of this dissident writer, Peter Mares is joined by Judith Armstrong who taught Russian studies at the University of Melbourne for twenty years and is a Fellow of the Contemporary Europe Centre at the University of Melbourne.
Inscriptions and marginalia - a tradition of annotations (repeat)
01/08/2008
How many of you feel comfortable about picking up a pen or pencil and writing inside a book that you might be reading? Although some people might consider this to be disrespectful of the work, there's a long tradition of inscribing thoughts around an existing text. A loose definition for these sorts of annotations is 'Marginalia'. Today on The Book Show we revisit a discussion about the function and value of these inscriptions over the centuries and what they can tell us about the journey a book has taken.
Joining the conversation are three people who have spent a great deal of time surrounded by books of all descriptions.
Professor Margaret Manion is one of Australia's most eminent and valued Art Historians, and brings a deep understanding of Medieval and Renaissance books and manuscripts.
Dr Nikki Hessell teaches Communication and Journalism at Massey University in New Zealand. Prior to that Nikki worked closely with Professor Heather Jackson in Toronto, studying the Marginalia of the Romantic Period, and especially the prolific annotations by Samuel Coleridge - and together Nikki and Heather produced a book called Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia.
And our third guest is Kay Craddock, whose antiquarian bookshop is something of an institution in Melbourne. Kay and her parents have been dealing in rare and valuable works for many decades and she brings a rich knowledge of the world of the book collector, and the importance of marginalia in determining the provenance and the authenticity of books.
(First broadcast 19/10/2007)
Crafting murder: Peter Temple + Michael Robotham Read Transcript
25/07/2008
Last weekend, the inaugural Crime and Justice Festival was being held at the old Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, bringing together writers, lawyers, social commentators and luminaries from the judiciary to look at writing about justice, human rights and (of course) crime fiction.
Peter Temple won a Ned Kelly award in 1997 for his first novel, Bad Debts. He's subsequently won four more Ned Kelly awards, the most recent of these being for the much acclaimed novel The Broken Shore, which also went on to win the ultimate plaudit for crime fiction, the international Gold Dagger Award now known as the Duncan Lawrie Dagger.
Michael Robotham started his literary life as a ghost-writer, lending his writing skills to politicians, pop stars and all manner of celebrities. His first novel (under his own name) was called Suspect, and it achieved an enormous amount of attention around the world. Since then, his books Lost, The Night Ferry and most recently Shatter, have reinforced his reputation as one of the best architects of the psychological thriller.
Peter and Michael, along with the literary editor of The Age Jason Steger, talk about their unplanned journeys into the crime genre, and the joys and agonies of wrestling a suspenseful story into being.
Another thing that these two writers have in common is that they both started out as journalists. And so Jason Steger started by asking Peter Temple what impact journalism has had on his writing.
The Invention of Everything Else (review) Read Transcript
22/07/2008
Nicola Tesla was an inventor, physicist and mechanical and electrical engineer who most notably invented the radio and the Tesla coil.
Monuments hailing this Serbian-American have been erected at Niagara Falls in the US and Queen Victoria Park in Canada, Belgrade International Airport is called Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport and his portrait is on the 100 Dinar Serbian banknote.
But this year two novels have come out that feature his life in fiction—as a sort of literary monument.
Australian Toni Jordan wrote about him in her book Addition and Samantha Hunt has written The Invention of Everything Else.
For The Book Show, David Astle has been reading Samantha Hunt's offering on Tesla.
The Red Tree composer Michael Yezerski Read Transcript
17/07/2008
A few months ago we spoke to the remarkable artist and storyteller Shaun Tan about his most recent book, a collection of short stories called Tales From Outer Suburbia, and at that time he spoke about the many adaptations of his books to theatre, film—and now to music.
The Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Gondwana Voices choir are currently touring a new work, by Australian composer Michael Yezerski, based on Shaun Tan's book The Red Tree, a beautifully illustrated reflection on feelings of isolation and depression, following the journey of a little girl who wakes up feeling that there's nothing to look forward to.
The musical adaptation of The Red Tree is performed under a large projection of Shaun Tan's images, with all elements maintaining the integrity of the original story.
When Michael Shirrefs spoke to the composer, Michael Yezerski, he asked why he'd been so excited when he realised whose book he would be adapting.
Travel writing Read Transcript
17/07/2008
What skills do the best travel writers use to interpret the world around them? And where do travel writers fit now, in a world where blogging means anyone can share stories and give helpful hints? To talk about the role of travel writers and how travel writing has changed over the years, Ramona Koval is joined by travel writer and editor Tom Swick and travel historian Richard White.
Neil Gaiman and the graphic novel Read Transcript
29/06/2008
Neil Gaiman is one of the creators of the graphic novel. The English writer has been crossing media forms for decades and has developed a reputation as a trailblazer. He's the first to acknowledge that this accolade is usually the result of successful collaborations with illustrators, film directors and other writers. Neil Gaiman has written fantasy, horror, and high-tech stories for adults, young adults and children. Sometimes it's hard to know which book is intended for which audience - and he likes it that way.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
25/06/2008
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, joins The Book Show again to discuss highlights from the latest issue.
First of all, with the presidential election looming (as it seems to have been for years now), we look at someone who could well emerge as a major figure in a future Democrat government, but who few people in Australia will have heard of—Jim Webb. This is a man who's being touted as a serious contender for vice-presidential running mate, alongside Barack Obama. But he's also a remarkable character in his own right, with a public profile that's equal parts 'war hero' and writer. His first book Fields of Fire, written in 1978, has been called the best book about the Vietnam war. And his writing, along with a passion for boxing, has had him compared to the late Norman Mailer. He's also a screenwriter (Rules of Engagement) and a documentary producer, but so much of Jim Webb revolves around his experiences and attitudes to war. So Robert and Ramona discuss Jim Webb's latest book, A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, which reads as something of a manifesto—a pitch for high office.
Then Robert and Ramona move on to Italy, and the rather epic figure of Giuseppe Garibaldi. According to reviewer Dave Gilmour, while other heroic Italians such as Mazzini, Cavour and Victor Emmanuel have become tarnished as clear historical facts start to eclipse pure nationalistic sentiment, Garibaldi remains 'an authentic Italian hero', one of 'the generation of giants' who helped to create modern Italy between 1848 and 1870. They discuss a new book which looks at this revolutionary life—Alfonso Scirocco's Garibaldi: Citizen of the World.
And finally, a look at Edmund White's review of three new translations of work from French writer Marguerite Duras. And in the process he paints an extraordinary image of her post-war years and her intemperate lurchings from alcoholic deathbed to social centre of attention.
The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (review) Read Transcript
24/06/2008
Young American writer Stefan Merrill Block's debut novel, The Story of Forgetting, is another addition to the growing genre of Alzheimer's literature. It's a tale told from the perspectives of an old man and a teenage boy, embroidered with fairytale and science. For the Book Show, Patricia Maunder has some thoughts on why this exploration of forgetting is so memorable.
All In The Mind's Natasha Mitchell interviews Stefan Merrill Block at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Find audio and transcript here.
David Blow: Persia Read Transcript
23/06/2008
Ramona Koval says she didn't read classics at Oxford or Cambridge (which she regrets) and so she has a tendency to gravitate towards books that will round out her education. Like Persia: Through Writers Eyes, edited and written by David Blow, who did study history at Cambridge, and Persian at the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London.
He's been a journalist, a publisher and a broadcaster with the BBC's Persian Service. And his book is really a history of Persia through the words of writers from Herodotus, Marco Polo and Vita Sackville-West to writers commenting on present day Iran. He's written a preface to each section outlining the history of the period in which they wrote, and mapped the history of Persia up to latter day Iran—which adds up to about three thousand years of history—just what the autodidact with a thirst for knowledge needs.
Paul Constant: stolen books Read Transcript
23/06/2008
We're all familiar with the idea of a bestseller list—a particular book store or a newspaper publishing popular titles—but what about books that aren't bought but are stolen?
Some organisations, including the American Library Association as well as libraries and newspapers here in Australia, do gather informal information on book theft.
In Australia, it's Stephanie Alexander's recipe book The Cook's Companion that often comes out on top of the most shoplifted. And ironically crime novels often get lifted as well.
One man who's had plenty of experience when it comes to the topic is Paul Constant. Paul worked for more than a decade in numerous book stores in the US, before joining the Seattle newspaper The Stranger as the book editor.
Working in the book stores, Paul Constant had to run after a few book burglars in his time—and he writes about the pleasures and perils of chasing book thieves in an article for The Stranger called 'Flying Off the Shelves'.
He spoke recently with The Book Show's Kate Pearcy about the classic book theft chase scene.
An evening of readings and storytelling
16/06/2008
Last year on The Book Show, we told the true story of a remarkable Scotsman, Calum MacLeod, whose feat of single-handedly building a road on the small Hebridean island of Raasay is part of Scottish highland folklore. That story struck a real chord with many listeners, including a Scots woman, Rona Lawrence, who believes that the traditions that keep such tales alive are important across many cultures. In the small Victorian town of Greendale, not far from Ballarat, Rona Lawrence hosts modest gatherings of locals who come together to tell stories and to read to each other.
Michael Shirrefs drove to Rona's house for The Book Show, to find out what lures people out on a cold country night.
Joseph Heller, the late American author of Catch 22 Read Transcript
09/06/2008
Today, from the archives of an earlier Radio National program, Books & Writing, a conversation that Ramona Koval had with the late, great American novelist and memoirist Joseph Heller. Heller was a master of the absurd, so much so that the title of his first novel and most famous book Catch 22 has entered the English language as the expression for an absurd and illogical concept.
You might remember when Heller's hero, Yossarian, is asked to fly on more dangerous World War Two bombing missions, the only way to get out of doing so is to plead insanity. But if you're insane, you wouldn't want to stop flying, so you must be sane to want to stop, in which case you have to keep flying. That's 'Catch 22'.
The book is now considered a classic, and Heller went on to write six more darkly comic novels, including Closing Time, which charts the progress of Yossarian and the evil Milo Minderbinder and others in the cast of the first novel as they make their way in the inferno that is post-war America.
In his memoir, Now and Then, you can read about many of the locations that have found their way into Heller's fiction, especially Coney Island, the place where Heller grew up and had so many of his formative experiences.
It was 1998, a year before his death, when Ramona spoke to Joseph Heller in his upper West Side Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park and he was, at 75, glossily handsome and charming and ready to talk about his writing life.
Ramona asked him first if he enjoyed the fact that the expression 'Catch 22' had well and truly been absorbed into the wider lexicon, as a term synonymous with absurdity and a sort of tail-chasing illogicality?
Anne Enright in conversation at the Sydney Writers' Festival Read Transcript
08/06/2008
Anne Enright's short stories make you sigh when you finish them, and each one delivers you to a place you haven't been before -- to a point of view that you may not have considered before. And of course there's her marvellous novel The Gathering, the story of the nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan, and the history that made them what they were. Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for this novel.
She was educated in English and Philosophy and was a student of the famed University of East Anglia's creative writing course, taught by novelist, critic and teacher Malcolm Bradbury and the remarkable Angela Carter. She's been a television producer and has written opinion pieces for newspapers, and of course she's now a rightly celebrated novelist and essayist.
Before Anne Enright spoke to Ramona Koval last Thursday evening, in Sydney's Recital Hall at Angel Place, she began with a reading from her Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering.
Reading by touch -- braille
08/06/2008
In braille, words and meaning are formed by dots on the page, fingers do the reading. It's an ingenious system that was developed by Louise Braille so that people with no vision could still have access to the world of ideas and information contained in fiction, but also street directories and train timetables.
Braille is as important for blind people as print is for sighted people, but, only a small portion of all printed texts are translated into braille.
The International Council of English Braille conference was held in Melbourne recently, and to coincide with this event, a public art installation called Braille Window was set up in the foyer of the conference venue.
The outside surface of the large streetfront window was covered with braille embossed A4 transparencies. The braille text was written by blind and low-vision people.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to the creators and contributors to the Braille Window.
Neil Gaiman and the graphic novel Read Transcript
04/06/2008
Neil Gaiman has been described as 'the father of the graphic novel'. The English writer, who's been crossing media forms for decades, has certainly developed an enviable reputation as a trailblazer, but he's the first to acknowledge that this accolade is usually the product of wonderful collaborations -- with illustrators and film directors and even other writers, like Terry Pratchett.
Neil Gaiman has written fantasy, horror, and high-tech stories for adults, young adults and children -- and sometimes it's hard to know which book is intended for which audience -- he likes it that way. His literary life started as an enduring collaboration with artist Dave McKean, but Neil seems unable to stay still, jumping between different forms and different media because he never wants to repeat himself, or try to compete, in any conventional way, with 3,000 years of traditional storytelling.
Michael Shirrefs spoke to Neil Gaiman during his recent trip to Australia and asked him why he was always taking on new styles and new problems.
Reading by touch -- braille
03/06/2008
In braille, words and meaning are formed by dots on the page, fingers do the reading. It's an ingenious system that was developed by Louise Braille so that people with no vision could still have access to the world of ideas and information contained in fiction, but also street directories and train timetables.
Braille is as important for blind people as print is for sighted people, but, only a small portion of all printed texts are translated into braille.
The International Council of English Braille conference was held in Melbourne recently, and to coincide with this event, a public art installation called Braille Window was set up in the foyer of the conference venue.
The outside surface of the large streetfront window was covered with braille embossed A4 transparencies. The braille text was written by blind and low-vision people.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to the creators and contributors to the Braille Window.
The libraries of East Timor Read Transcript
02/06/2008
How crucial are libraries for the restoration of knowledge and culture in a new country working to build an identity? Kirsty Sword Gusmão and librarian Patti Manolis discuss the role of libraries in East Timor.
Great Australian Eulogies
30/05/2008
Eulogies are strange beasts. They demand eloquence at the very moment that grief tries to steal the words from your mouth. And in a culture where we find any discussion of death difficult, coming up with the right words at the right moment can be a struggle.
Publisher and editor Richard Walsh has put together a collection of moving, funny and often very quirky send-offs in a book called Great Australian Eulogies. And it's not just the large public figures that warrant fine elegies, some of the most poignant moments are low-key and beautifully simple memories of ordinary folk.
At the recent Sydney Writers' Festival, Richard Walsh spoke to an audience about the power and distinctive quality of our parting words in the ritual of death.
Shaun Tan - Tales from Outer Suburbia Read Transcript
29/05/2008
Shaun Tan has done much to propel the graphic novel into the mainstream with his exquisitely illustrated stories -- books like The Lost Thing and The Red Tree -- which told stories with a diverse palette of drawing styles.
But it was his last book, The Arrival, a wordless allegory of the migrant experience, that has truly set him apart. That book won him the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Artist, the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year (not bad for a work without text), and this year he's won the French Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for Best Comic Book and has been nominated for two Hugo Awards.
His latest is a collection of short stories called Tales from Outer Suburbia; pictures with words this time. Before speaking to Michael Shirrefs, here's Shaun Tan reading the first story from his collection: 'The Water Buffalo'.
Darwin Online Read Transcript
28/05/2008
Dr John van Wyhe is a science historian from Cambridge University with a mission to make original material by and about Charles Darwin available to everyone. In 2002, with the help of volunteers like e-text creator Sue Asscher from Queensland, John started to assemble a website featuring Darwin's published writings, unpublished papers and private papers in their original, unedited form. Now the website has around 90,000 images.
Junot Diaz in conversation at the Sydney Writers' Festival Read Transcript
27/05/2008
Junot Diaz has had marvellous success with his short stories. They appeared in the New Yorker and The Paris Review and four times in subsequent editions of Best American Short Stories.
Both his short story collection Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao have been critically acclaimed. Michiko Kakutani, the often hard to please critic of The New York Times called his Oscar novel 'An extraordinarily vibrant book that's fuelled by adrenaline-powered prose, it's confidently steered through several decades of history by a madcap, magpie voice that's equally at home talking about Tolkien and Trujillo, anime movies and ancient Dominican curses, sexual shenanigans at Rutgers University and secret police raids in Santo Domingo.'
Oscar Wao is a fat, nerdy boy, a migrant from the Dominican Republic, who lives with his sister and his mother, and dreams of becoming 'the Dominican Tolkien'. He falls in love with girls who won't respond to his nerdy advances and his greatest fear is that he will die a Virgin, unknown in the annals of Dominican Republic machismo.
We meet his sister Lola and his room-mate Yunior and generations of his family who have been deeply affected by the Dominican Republic's dictatorship of Trujillo -- nicknamed 'The Goat' -- in Oscar's words the 'dictatingest dictator who ever dictated.'
Before speaking to Ramona Koval, Junot Diaz began the session by reading from his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao -- and be warned that there's a small amount of strong language in this intrview.
Anne Enright in conversation at the Sydney Writers' Festival Read Transcript
26/05/2008
Anne Enright's short stories make you sigh when you finish them, and each one delivers you to a place you haven't been before -- to a point of view that you may not have considered before. And of course there's her marvellous novel The Gathering, the story of the nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan, and the history that made them what they were. Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for this novel.
She was educated in English and Philosophy and was a student of the famed University of East Anglia's creative writing course, taught by novelist, critic and teacher Malcolm Bradbury and the remarkable Angela Carter. She's been a television producer and has written opinion pieces for newspapers, and of course she's now a rightly celebrated novelist and essayist.
Before Anne Enright spoke to Ramona Koval last Thursday evening, in Sydney's Recital Hall at Angel Place, she began with a reading from her Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering.
Why Not Catch 21? Gary Dexter looks at the stories behind book titles Read Transcript
25/05/2008
Coming up with the perfect title for a book can be a challenge for writers. In his collection Why Not Catch 21: the Stories Behind the Titles Gary Dexter has compiled some explanations for how our favourite works ended up with their names.
From Plato's Republic to Catch 22, he uncovers the debate and the lingering questions about titles we now take for granted.
So how did Joseph Heller come up with the title Catch 22? Gary Dexter explains.
Poetic anarchy: Pi O Read Transcript
25/05/2008
Pi O is a man who calls himself an urban poet -- a poet of cafes and coffee shops, of time and space with poems of numbers and poems of fragments, with poetry of the postmodern, premodern and most modern -- and above all an anarchist poet.
David Rieff live at the Sydney Writers' Festival Read Transcript
23/05/2008
David Rieff is the author of seven previous books on immigration, international conflict, and humanitarianism.
He's been a literary editor, a journalist and is now a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a board member of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and a board member of the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute.
But his new book, Swimming in a Sea of Death, is very much rooted in his position as the only son of writer Susan Sontag.
Its subtitle is 'A Son's Memoir' and it concerns his mother's final experience of cancer -- a disease she had overcome three times before.
Susan Sontag was a novelist and an essayist and a writer of non-fiction books like On Photography, Regarding the Pain of Others, Illness As Metaphor, and Aids and Its Metaphors.
David Rieff is a special guest of the Festival and joins Ramona Koval for The Book Show.
The great unpublished novels of Australia Read Transcript
21/05/2008
Unsolicited manuscripts are sent to publishers all the time and they call this the slush pile, but Overland magazine and independent publisher Sleepers have actually been asking for manuscripts from everyone and anyone!
As a result they've been sent manuscripts that are verse novels, Christian allegories, sci-fi, Australian historical fiction; some that are sexist and one by a writer who boasts they've never read a novel so their style has not been corrupted by prior exposure!
They've witnessed an outpouring of creativity and I expect some noteworthy attempts as well as failures.
Jeff Sparrow from Overland and Louise Swinn from the independent publisher Sleepers join Ramona Koval in the studio to talk about the great -- and not so great -- unpublished novels of Australia that they've found in their pursuit of literary gold.
Why Not Catch 21? Gary Dexter looks at the stories behind book titles Read Transcript
20/05/2008
Coming up with the perfect title for a book can be a challenge for writers. In his collection Why Not Catch 21: the Stories Behind the Titles Gary Dexter has compiled some explanations for how our favourite works ended up with their names.
From Plato's Republic to Catch 22, he uncovers the debate and the lingering questions about titles we now take for granted.
So how did Joseph Heller come up with the title Catch 22? Gary Dexter explains.
AL Kennedy: writing at night
20/05/2008
This morning it's a pleasure to welcome back Scottish writer Alison Kennedy.
AL Kennedy has won many prizes for all sorts of writing, including film and television scripts, plays, short stories, and musical comedy.
Her novel Day, published last year, won the Saltire prize for Scottish Book of the Year, the Costa Best Novel Award, and the Austrian state prize for European Literature. Ironically, however, it's not Day, we're speaking to her about but the night.
As a self confessed night-owl, Alison Kennedy says she likes to work between 10pm and 4 or 5am.
And she joined Ramona Koval live from Scotland where it was one in the morning her time.
Trying Leviathan: putting the whale on trial Read Transcript
19/05/2008
Manhatten in the early nineteenth century was a thriving commercial centre and port. Following problems with the quality of fish oil held in casks on the wharves, the State decided to inspect all casks, with a fee of $75 to be paid to the inspector. Samuel Judd refused to pay, saying his casks contained whale oil not fish oil. Kirsten Garrett looks at how this issue led to one of the most sensational and important trials in the history of American law and science, a story dotted with flamboyant court rhetoric, whalers' tales and satire involving the botanist Joseph Banks.
The Future Australian Race: Redmond Barry v Marcus Clarke Read Transcript
19/05/2008
Playwrights Bill Garner and Sue Gore have dramatised a satirical article by Marcus Clarke: The Future Australian Race. The play looks at the relationship between Marcus Clarke and Sir Redmond Barry, the man who is best known for sentencing Ned Kelly. The two men met at the State Library of Victoria, where Barry was grooming Clarke for the position of head librarian.
Poetry special: The Death of the Bird by AD Hope Read Transcript
16/05/2008
Today, 'The Death of the Bird' by AD Hope, or Alec Derwent Hope.
Poetry special: The Glugs of Gosh by CJ Dennis Read Transcript
14/05/2008
CJ Dennis is best known for The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke but for many readers The Glugs of Gosh is a favourite. The chance to relish the political satire, to take delight in the rhyme—Gosh and Splosh, profundity and rotundity, Ogs and Podge—and to recite such full-bodied words explains the joy many take in this work. Once again Lyn Gallacher is our guide through this world of Gosh.
After this program went to air one of our listeners, Greg Hall from Hobart, kindly sent us pictures of his own 1917 copy of The Glugs of Gosh. You can see them by downloading the pdf files below:
Dust jacket
Hard cover
Illustrated Frontispiece
Printed details
Cover of special edition for use in the trenches
Poetry special: Rockpool by Judith Wright Read Transcript
13/05/2008
In the second in this special series dedicated to classic Australian poems Lyn Gallacher focuses on 'Rockpool', one of Judith Wright's later works. It's a dramatically unsentimental poem which is unflinching in its view of life and death.
Clunes Booktown - John Marsden
02/05/2008
John Marsden hasn't had to travel very far to get to Clunes Booktown.
John is a popular Australian children's and young adults' author, his books include the popular Tomorrow series, The Head Book, The Boy You Brought Home and many more.
He is a teacher who set up a school near Hanging Rock, Mt Macedon, called Candelbark, which is in this beautiful region. And he's come here today with some of his students.
He'll be in Clunes over the weekend in conversation with the other guest writers too, and he joins Ramona Koval and Michael Mackenzie for a reading from his book Marsden on Marsden.
Clunes Booktown - Writing place and travelling
02/05/2008
Alexis Wright, Anthony Lawrence and Melissa Lucashenko were all lured to Clunes Booktown by the promise of food and wine, a town overflowing with books and the chance to read their work to the Booktown audience.
These writers have all travelled to many places to speak about their books, and place is an important element in their work.
Anthony Lawrence is a poet; he has a new book called Bark which evokes the link between landscape and fauna.
Melissa Lucashenko is a novelist and her essays have appeared in Griffith Review. Her latest book is young adult fiction, called Too Flash. Her novels are often set on the fringes of cities—like Logan City near Brisbane, and other rural towns. Her traditional land is in northern NSW around Mulimbimby.
Alexis Wright was Miles Franklin Literary award winner in 2007 for her novel Carpentaria. She has also written non-fiction like Grog War and edited an anthology called Take Power, celebrating 20 years of land rights in Central Australia. She grew up with her grandmother in Cloncurry, Queensland, and her traditional country is in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Clunes Booktown - Booksellers
02/05/2008
Of course Clunes' Booktown wouldn't exist if booksellers didn't come to the town and set up temporary shops in the buildings.
Two booksellers who came last year and have come back again are Barbara Russell from Vintage Cookbooks and Barbara Hince from Kenneth Hince Old & Fine Books. They've both come up from Melbourne for the weekend.
Poetic anarchy: Pi O Read Transcript
29/04/2008
Pi O is a man who calls himself an urban poet -- a poet of cafes and coffee shops, of time and space with poems of numbers and poems of fragments, with poetry of the postmodern, premodern and most modern -- and above all an anarchist poet.
John Updike's Due Considerations (review) Read Transcript
29/04/2008
Few people in America can compare with John Updike in the art of short-form non-fiction writing -- essays, reviews, critiques and introductions. Updike's prodigious output over more than half a century has, periodically, been brought together in published collections, and the sixth of these is titled Due Considerations. Literary critic Don Anderson reviews this new collection.
A classic conversation with Carlos Fuentes
25/04/2008
Today on The Book Show, a treat from the archives—a conversation with one of Latin America's most prominent men of letters, the great Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. In 2005, he had just received the Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix, awarded annually to a writer of international stature and accomplishment, as a celebration of a lifetime of literary achievement.
Born in 1928 in Panama City, Carlos Fuentes had Mexican parents and later became a Mexican citizen. A writer of essays, literary history, novels, screenplays, plays and short stories, Fuentes combined his life as a writer with a successful career in international relations, which culminated in being appointed Mexico's ambassador to France in 1975–77.
In This I Believe (En Esto Creo) Fuentes tells us that as far as literature is concerned, the second half of the twentieth century belonged to Latin America. Think of García Márquez, Paz, Borges, Neruda, Asturias, Cortázar and think of Fuentes, too. His novels, such as A Change of Skin and The Death of Artemio Cruz, were inspirations for many readers who wondered how writers could speak for their societies, even as they tried to analyse and change them.
Restoring the Montefiascone Library
17/04/2008
One imagines that anyone working with rare books must harbour a private fantasy about one day stumbling upon a collection of books that has remained hidden, or at least unrecognised for its true historical value. And the grand fantasy must surely be the discovery of an entire library that has been forgotten, neglected or ignored.
Well, such a library did come to light about 20 years ago, in the central Italian hill town of Montefiascone, a village that straddles a crater rim overlooking one of the largest volcanic lakes in Europe - Lago Bolseno.
A Seminary was built on the crater's edge, in the late 17th Century, by Marcantonio Barbarigo - the Bishop of Montefiascone and Corneto - and the focus of the Seminary, for the Bishop, was a beautiful library with vaulted ceilings and trompe l'oeil paintings. Over time this library became a space, not just for theological study but also for secular learning.
The library sustained serious damage during the Napoleonic Wars and then again during the 2nd World War. But nothing was quite as devastating as the building of a shower block directly above the library, during the early 20th Century. Subsequent major leaks through the roof did terrible damage to the collection, turning the library into a damp, mouldy habitat for rats, birds, fleas and all manner of other ravenous beasties.
UK-based Australian book conservator Cheryl Porter, was approached in 1987 to give advice on how best to approach the formidable job of trying to stop the damage and start the slow job of restoring the library to its former glory. Cheryl enlisted the help of one of Britain's most experienced rare book specialists - Nicolas Barker - who was, for many years, Deputy Keeper at the British Library, responsible for Conservation and Special Materials. Over the next 20 years, Nicolas and Cheryl organised volunteer groups of conservation specialists to visit the library annually, and in 1992 The Book Show's Michael Shirrefs joined one of these conservation teams. When he recently caught up again with Cheryl Porter and Nicolas Barker to find out how the project's progressing, he asked Cheryl about her first visit to the library, 21 years ago.
Helen Garner's return to fiction with The Spare Room Read Transcript
13/04/2008
Helen Garner's award-winning books include novels, short-stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction, like The First Stone (1995) and Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004). Her new book is The Spare Room, her first novel in 15 years.
Nicola is coming to Melbourne from her home in Sydney with what turns out to be a stage-four cancer. That's the fourth of four stages. She is very sick. But she's coming to stay in her old friend Helen's spare room, while she undergoes what she believes is a sure-fire cure for cancer conducted at an alternative clinic.
So is this art imitating life?
Helen Garner's return to fiction with The Spare Room Read Transcript
08/04/2008
Helen Garner's award-winning books include novels, short-stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction, like The First Stone (1995) and Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004). Her new book is The Spare Room, her first novel in 15 years.
Nicola is coming to Melbourne from her home in Sydney with what turns out to be a stage-four cancer. That's the fourth of four stages. She is very sick. But she's coming to stay in her old friend Helen's spare room, while she undergoes what she believes is a sure-fire cure for cancer conducted at an alternative clinic.
So is this art imitating life?
Peter Cochrane: Colonial Ambition Read Transcript
07/04/2008
The story of Burke and Wills, and Ned Kelly -- these are the familiar characters in Australian history that re-surface in the popular imagination.
But why do we always return to these stories? Is it because, unlike America, we didn't have a war of independence, that our civil rights movement was overshadowed by what was happening on the international stage, that we formed government through consensus?
Is it because our colonial history is considered fusty and, well, a little dull?
Peter Cochrane thinks it doesn't need to be this way. He says that if historians used the toolbox of the novelist, Australian history would come to life.
Peter Cochrane is the author of Colonial Ambition, which won The Age Book Of The Year Award and was joint winner of the first Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History.
Colonial Ambition focuses on the character William Wentworth, and Peter wrote an article about this man's place in the human drama of our early colony in an article in the recent Griffith Review. The essay's called 'Stories From The Dustbin', and Peter joins Ramona Koval from the ABC's Sydney studios.
Advancing towards World War II
06/04/2008
In his latest book Human Smoke American writer Nicholson Baker questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid World War II at all costs but were forced into action by Hitler. Citing a wide range of documentation, newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, memoirs and diaries, he examines the motives of the United States and Britain for going to war.
Peter Stothard, Times Literary Supplement editor
02/04/2008
The unmistakable sounds of Elgar's best known work, 'Land of Hope and Glory' from the Pomp and Circumstance March, lead us into a conversation with Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in the ABC's London studio.
Today he's talking about a number of books that have come out to coincide with the recent 150th birthday celebrations of that quintessential English composer Sir Edward Elgar. Peter's also looking at a new book from controversial Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk -- Other Colours: Essays and a Story. And a new collection of writings from the current embattled head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, titled Wrestling With Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology.
Advancing towards World War II Read Transcript
01/04/2008
In his latest book Human Smoke American writer Nicholson Baker questions the commonly held belief that the Allies wanted to avoid World War II at all costs but were forced into action by Hitler. Citing a wide range of documentation, newspaper and magazine articles, radio broadcasts, memoirs and diaries, he examines the motives of the United States and Britain for going to war.
James Charlton: 'So Much Light' (review) Read Transcript
26/03/2008
Poetry that searches for the spiritual dimension of life has a long tradition that dates back to Persian poet Rumi and beyond.
And Australian poet James Charlton also casts about for the sacred in his latest collection of poetry. For him, light, luminescence and incandescence have a special spiritual dimension.
His earlier collection is called Luminous Bodies and his latest is So Much Light.
James Charlton teaches in the School of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania, and he's also the poetry editor of the literary quarterly Island, as well as advisory editor for Australasia of Chautauqua Literary Journal, published in upstate New York.
Geoff Page begins his review by reading one of the works from James Charlton's book So Much Light, this poem's called 'One Spacious Day'.
City of Words: Alberto Manguel Read Transcript
26/03/2008
This Sunday night on Radio National, the Big Ideas program begins a new series of six programs: the Massey Lectures, first broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last year. The lecturer is internationally acclaimed writer and translator Alberto Manguel, who has written novels, film scripts, essays and a range of non-fiction works. He has edited anthologies on a variety of themes including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading and, more recently, The Library At Night.
The Massey lecture series is titled The City Of Words and in it Alberto Manguel turns our attention to a variety of literary sources from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel to the Epic of Gilgamesh; from Don Quixote to Stanley Kubrick's film of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many more. The aim is to address the problem of how we are to live together in this complex, multi-voiced world, where many of the voices are raised in anger and in fear.
Alberto Manguel joins Ramona Koval from a small village in France (where he lives with the gorgeous library he created in a 15th century barn) near the Loire valley.
Paula Fox Read Transcript
24/03/2008
On the Book Show today, we meet 84-year-old American novelist, memoirist and children's writer Paula Fox. And this is an extraordinary story about an extraordinary writer who's just been rediscovered after 30 years of obscurity.
Paula Fox had a turbulent childhood after she was rejected by her mother and then handed to a variety of carers. At 20 she gave up her own daughter for adoption. This she reveals in her memoir, Borrowed Finery, in which her cool observations of her early life were published last year. She went on to write controversial but award-winning children's books as well as autobiographical novels.
Now she's enjoying a revival, as her adult fiction is championed by a new generation of American writers like Jonathan Franzen, who read her 1970 novel, Desperate Characters, in passing and then realised that he ranked her above Roth, Bellow and Updike. Others have compared her with Kafka, Chekhov and Flaubert. Yet, until they were recently reissued in the United States with specially commissioned introductions and much fanfare, the last of her adult novels had been out of print since 1992, and most of her earlier books had been unavailable for decades. So when we tracked Paula Fox down to her home in Brooklyn and convinced her to come to a Manhattan studio in 2004, we were keen to speak to this woman whose work shows a remarkable ability for observing the important moments, or at least making seemingly unimportant moments full of portent. She arrived in the heat of the afternoon describing the journey uptown, and especially a rather bad-tempered woman holding a fan in the stuffy subway. It seemed almost like the beginning of another short story. Here's Ramona Koval's conversation with Paula Fox, recorded in 2004 and originally broadcast on the Radio National program Books & Writing.
Miyazawa Kenji, Selections (review) Read Transcript
24/03/2008
You've heard of the slow food movement, but perhaps there should be a slow-reading movement too. Some books are meant to be read slowly, and this is what Matt Crosby found when he was reading the collection of poetry by Miyazawa Kenji.
Matt Crosby is an actor who's performed in Japan in the famous Kibuki Theatre tradition. He was recently in a performance over there that drew on the work of Miyazawa Kenji -- a popular Japanese poet whose work is taught in schools.
So Matt settled himself under a metaphorical tree to consider and reflect on a new English edition of Miyazawa Kenji's poetry.
Vendela Vida: Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name (review) Read Transcript
21/03/2008
One writer who is fascinated by modern rituals and rites of passage is Vendela Vida.
She wrote her first non-fiction book, Girls On The Verge, about American women's initiation rituals (sorority rushes, debutante balls and gang inductions).
Since then she has been writing a trilogy about the dark side of rites of passage -- a sort of female version of Catcher In The Rye. She says she 'set out to write a trilogy about violence and forgiveness, to explore those themes through various angles and plots'. The first novel in the trilogy was And Now You Can Go and her latest is Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name.
In this novel, the central character is searching for her father, after she discovers that the man who raised her was not her biological father -- the search takes her to Lapland.
And reviewer Ryan Paine was dazzled by the Northern Lights.
Journeying through America with Don Watson Read Transcript
19/03/2008
After reading Don Watson's new book American Journeys, you realise that some things are just 'very American'.
Don's the author of bestselling books on language - Death Sentence and Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, and his celebrated book on his time as Paul Keating's speechwriter and advisor Recollections Of A Bleeding Heart. But Don Watson has lately turned his eye, and it seems his heart, towards the United States of America.
Taking trains, and sometimes driving, he covered 39,000 kilometres, from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to the Deep South, to Yellowstone National Park, and many motels and diners in between, Don Watson writes of his impressions of the greatest democracy on Earth, a phrase that you hear often in what's also the greatest parochial society on the planet as well.
And Don Watson joins Ramona Koval for The Book Show.
The poetry of Ted Hughes
05/03/2008
Ted Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. Although critics are divided about work produced during his Laureate years, many still consider him one of the best poets of his generation. Ted Hughes was married from 1956 to 1963 to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide at the age of 30. His last major work Birthday Letters explored their complex relationship. Julie Copeland enters the poetic world of Ted Hughes.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
04/03/2008
Robert Silvers, the editor of the New York Review of Books, joins Ramona Koval to discuss three new books. First they look at the phenomenon of the online encyclopedia, which is the subject of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton. Some fascinating bits of information emerge, for example, more people use Wikipedia than use Amazon or eBay, and its usage is up there with MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.
Also in the next edition of the New York Review of Books is a review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A new Verse Translation. British poet, playwright and novelist Simon Armitage has translated this 14th century tale, originally written in Middle English, into contemporary idiom. Does this type of translation work? And what makes this tale from 1380 worth reading today?
And finally, a book about what we eat -- Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Michael Pollan's book is about the industrialisation of the American diet and what that has meant, not only for Americans but for citizens of the many countries around the world, including our own, who have followed America into a fatty, starchy, sugary diet. How did refined white flour, sugars and animal fats come to dominate the American diet?
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce (review) Read Transcript
29/02/2008
English novelist Paul Torday made his debut early last year with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. He's followed this up with The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, the story of how a man who dislikes wine becomes not just a wine lover but an alcoholic on the brink of destruction. Patricia Maunder provides tasting notes.
<em>The Fern Tattoo</em> by David Brooks
25/02/2008
David Brooks is perhaps better known as a poet and an authority on AD Hope.
The Fern Tattoo is his second venture into fiction. It's a story that spans several generations and uncovers myriad secrets. There's a bigamist bishop, a tattooed librarian, and a young girl who kills her best friend by accident. David Brooks spoke to Lyn Gallacher for The Book Show
Spanish language publishing
24/02/2008
If you're a struggling writer keen to find a market for your work, the time may be right to brush up on your Spanish.
The market for Spanish-language books is now expanding at break-neck speed, particularly in developing countries, where literacy rates are rising.
In fact, marketing books to the world's 400 million speakers of Spanish is now a multi-billion dollar business, making Spanish the second most published language in the world.
Interestingly, books in translation -- mainly from English -- account for a fifth of all titles published; that's still a big chunk of the market.
But as we're about to hear, that could be good news for Australian writers.
Antonia Kerrigan is a literary agent representing writers from both the new and the old parts of the Spanish-speaking world. She's speaking to The Book Show from Barcelona.
And Adriana Lopez was, until recently, the editor of Criticas magazine, the sister publication of Publishers Weekly, and still writes for the magazine. And while Adriana is an American, this morning she joins the program from Madrid.
Review of Douglas Coupland's <em>The Gum Thief</em> Read Transcript
20/02/2008
Now to an epistolary novel within a novel. It sounds like a mouthful but Douglas Coupland's latest book The Gum Thief is written as a collection of journal entries, notes, and letters. It also has a novella within the novel called Glove Pond which is written by one of the characters in The Gum Thief.
Douglas Coupland is the Canadian author who wrote Generation X and was instrumental in popularising the term.
Kirsten Alexander has been reading The Gum Thief for the Book Show.
Writing lyrics ... Willie Nelson
19/02/2008
Please note that for copyright reasons we are unable to include this part of today's Book Show in the podcast. Today we continue our series about writing successful songs and the contribution lyrics make to a song's enduring appeal.
The second program looks at the work of Willie Nelson, who still finds songwriting a difficult experience after almost 70 years. 'It's kind of like labour pains,' he says.
For the Book Show Fiona Croall takes a look at what motivates Willie to write hits such as 'Crazy', 'Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys' and 'Funny How Time Slips Away'.
Faust in Copenhagen
18/02/2008
The book Faust in Copenhagen refers to a gathering of famous physicists who assembled at the Copenhagen Institute in Denmark in 1932 and wrote and staged a satirical play based on the story of Faust. Each character was a thinly disguised real physicist and their intellectual arguments and personal foibles were, apparently, fully exploited to great merriment.
There's a lot more in the book, which is subtitled The struggle for the soul of physics. Professor of physics Joe Wolfe, from the University of NSW, has a stab at explaining both the book and the concept of quantum mechanics.
Spanish language publishing
13/02/2008
If you're a struggling writer keen to find a market for your work, the time may be right to brush up on your Spanish.
The market for Spanish-language books is now expanding at break-neck speed, particularly in developing countries, where literacy rates are rising.
In fact, marketing books to the world's 400 million speakers of Spanish is now a multi-billion dollar business, making Spanish the second most published language in the world.
Interestingly, books in translation -- mainly from English -- account for a fifth of all titles published; that's still a big chunk of the market.
But as we're about to hear, that could be good news for Australian writers.
Antonia Kerrigan is a literary agent representing writers from both the new and the old parts of the Spanish-speaking world. She's speaking to The Book Show from Barcelona.
And Adriana Lopez was, until recently, the editor of Criticas magazine, the sister publication of Publishers Weekly, and still writes for the magazine. And while Adriana is an American, this morning she joins the program from Madrid.
Meanjin's new editor, Sophie Cunningham
11/02/2008
From contributor to editor -- Sophie Cunningham is the new editor of the literary magazine Meanjin. She hasn't started in the job yet, but how is she going to put her mark on this magazine that's been around since 1940? She's taking over from Ian Britain.
She's had many years in publishing; first at McPhee Gribble/Penguin then, from 1994 until 2003, at Allen & Unwin. She's also been at Lonely Planet and is a freelance writer. Her first novel Geography came out in 2004 and her second book, Bird, is coming out later this year.
Sophie Cunningham joins Ramona Koval on The Book Show.
Writing from the grave -- franchised authors
04/02/2008
The best known of the 'writers from the grave' or 'ghostwriters' in the literal sense is Robert Ludlum. At the time of his death in 2001 he had sold 210 million books (only outsold by JK Rowling). No wonder his publishers have released 12 new works bearing his name since he died. Other notable 'franchised authors' who have been ghostwritten include Lawrence Sanders and Theodor (Dr Seuss) Geisel.
But it's not just dead authors who are being franchised, the living are there too. Tom Clancy is the best example. All his works are simply from ideas he creates, the rest is left up to another writer. However, it's his name that gets all of the credit.
Is this legal and is it ethical? Nic Pullen dissects this question on the Book Show.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
30/01/2008
Noel Coward corresponded with some of the mightiest pens in literature and show business throughout the 20th century. Today, Robert Silvers from the New York Review of Books reviews the publication of the personal letters of the actor and dramatist which expressed the hopes and fears of a society and of an age.
He also talks about Wernher von Braun - the American rocket scientist, born in Germany, who served as an SS officer during the second world war but was taken in by American's to assist in the big space race. And he reflects on a wonderful piece in the Review by Indian novelist Pankaj Mishra, who met, in Beijing, with the dissident writer who goes by the name of "Woeser", and whose voice the Chinese authorities are trying their best to silence.
Arthur Boyd's artist book: Sangkuriang, a mythical Indonesian story
11/01/2008
Sangkuriang is a collaborative work between Indra Deigun and Arthur Boyd, who created swirling, magical images to accompany this mythical Indonesian story about volcanoes and strange, unearthly creatures. It was printed in 1993 and is in the State Library of Queensland artist book collection.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to librarian Helen Cole about this book, which is one of her most treasured items in the collection.
An intimate relationship: editors and writers Read Transcript
11/01/2008
Editors are like invisible menders. If they're good at what they do their tracks are invisible but without their contribution, the work would fray at the edges. So how is this invisible work done? What goes on between writers and editors? What are the politics and protocols of the editorial relationship?
On the Book Show today we're joined by a writer/editor pair who have consented to reveal all! By hearing the perspective of both author and writer, hopefully we'll get some insight into what it's like to edit, and be edited.
Judith Lukin-Amundsen is one of Australia's leading editors, she's worked with the likes of Tim Winton, Robert Dessaix, Delia Falconer, Rodney Hall and Charlotte Wood, who also joins us today. The two have collaborated on all three of Charlotte Wood's novels - one which is forthcoming in October: The Children.
We're also joined by Jacquie Kent, an editor herself, and biographer of the late Beatrice Davis (1909-1992), the legendary editor at Angus and Robertson from 1937 to 1970 - the woman who practically invented the idea of the professional editor in Australia.
Napoleon's Double by Antoni Jach (review) Read Transcript
10/01/2008
What happens when you take seven characters whose names start with Jean, throw them into the Egyptian desert, meet Napoleon, and then send them off to Australia to do some cartography? The answer is nothing much, but that was part of the appeal for Brendan Gullifer, writer and broadcaster. He read Napoleon's Double by Antoni Jach for the Book Show and he was swept away by the journey.
The Power of Literature: Andrew O'Hagan Read Transcript
04/01/2008
Today we bring you the opening address of the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival by one of Scotland's most gifted writers, Andrew O'Hagan. In his address titled 'The Power of Literature: The News That Stays News', he argues that words and imagination are our great protectors. And when you hear what he has to say, delivered in his sonorous Glasgow accent, you might also walk away convinced of the power of books. It's quite a feast of ideas this morning, told by an erudite and funny writer, so I hope you can stay with us.
But first a little more about Andrew O'Hagan, widely recognised as one of the finest writers in the UK. He's been twice Booker-shortlisted for his novels Personality and Be Near Me. He writes for the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. His latest book, Be Near Me, a novel about the nature of moral ambivalence, tells the story of a priest and his developing relationship with teenagers Mark and Lisa. It's about the effects of grief, longing and the violence of the mob. You might have heard my interview with Andrew O'Hagan here on The Book Show in late 2006.
O'Hagan's work has always concerned itself with Scottish identity, and more generally with the structures and ideas that hold societies together and the frail bonds which hold individuals to the body of society -- with a tender concern for the people who find themselves adrift and inadequate.
Here he is, Andrew O'Hagan, with his opening address to 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival, 'The Power of Literature, The News That Stays News'.
Andrei Makine's The Woman Who Waited Read Transcript
03/01/2008
The Woman Who Waited tells the story of a woman's 30-year wait for the man she loves to return from the front during WW2, a wait that seems impossible and inhuman in the eyes of the book's narrator -- a callow, 26-year-old writer from Leningrad who has travelled to a remote northern village of the Soviet Union to record the local customs.
Andrei Makine was born in Siberia in 1957 but sought asylum in France in 1987. With his fourth novel, Le Testament Francais, he became the first author to win two of France's most important literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis.
Andrei Makine was a guest of the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival, where he talked with The Book Show's Rhiannon Brown.
