Past Programs
Community and Society - 2008
Louis Nowra on ice
27/11/2008
Louis Nowra, novelist, playwright, essayist and screenwriter, has a new book out. It's a novel called Ice, a meditation on the many forms of ice: frozen water, ice the drug, ice as death, ice as preservation. It starts with a huge iceberg being towed into Sydney Harbour in the second half of the 19th century.
Saving endangered words
25/11/2008
The wordsmiths at Collins English Dictionary have identified 24 rarely used words deemed too obscure to be included in the dictionary's 30th anniversary edition to be published next year. But there is a rescue plan. The London Times is spearheading an online campaign to save the endangered words from permanent oblivion, with some of Britain's leading literary lights arguing for their salvation.
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.
The Atlantic Ocean - essays by Andrew O'Hagan
07/11/2008
The ebullient Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan is best known for his fiction. He has written three novels: Our Fathers, Personality and Be Near Me which have all won prizes. But he also has a reputation as a writer of non-fiction. He's a contributing editor with The London Review of Books and has been described as 'the best essayist of his generation' by The New York Times. At this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival he spoke with journalist Magnus Linklater about his latest book The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America.
Robert Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books
06/11/2008
In 1963 a new publication called The New York Review of Books was launched. One of its founders, who had been an editor at Harpers and The Paris Review, was asked to be the first editor. Forty-five years later Robert Silvers is still its editor. On the day Americans celebrate a new president-elect he talks to The Book Show about elections and anniversaries.
Ian McEwan at the Sydney Opera House (repeat)
04/11/2008
Earlier this year novelist Ian McEwan was a guest at the Sydney Opera House in the International Speakers Series. In his humorous address he explores the boundary between fact and fiction, he talks about the engagement of readers with ideas and characters and he reads from some of the marvellously cranky letters he has received, correcting facts in his novels.
(First broadcast 11 April 2008)
Marilynne Robinson's Home Read Transcript
31/10/2008
Marilynne Robinson, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Gilead, has written a new novel, Home. It takes place in the same period and the same Iowa town of Gilead in the mid 1950s.
Home is set in the house of Pastor Robert Boughton. He's a widower, a retired pastor, and he's being cared for by his younger daughter Glory. She's in her late 30s and getting over a broken engagement to a man she has discovered is already married. And Jack has not been seen for some 20 years, after the disgrace of getting a young girl pregnant.
Writing the Future: the first Asia-Pacific festival of writing
29/10/2008
Professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair, poet and editor of the Indian Literary journal Biblio, is one of the organisers of the first Asia-Pacific Festival of Writing, held this month in New Delhi and the Indian hill-station town of Shimla.
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.
Public figures, private lives
28/10/2008
Is the private life of a public figure a proper subject for biography? And how does a biographer decide what to reveal and what to screen from public gaze? Historian David Day has written biographies of three public figures: Ben Chifley, John Curtin and Andrew Fisher. He discusses balancing the need to explore the private landscape of subjects with a duty to be discreet about other people's lives.
Peter Goldsworthy: Everything I Knew
27/10/2008
Australian novelist, essayist, librettist and poet Peter Goldsworthy talks about his new novel Everything I Knew. It's set in Penola, South Australia, in 1964 when Miss Peach, a new teacher on a scooter who's the spitting image of Audrey Hepburn, comes to town and fourteen-year-old Robbie Burns sits up and takes notice.
Thoughts on the Booker -- Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement
17/10/2008
Peter Stothard discusses the Man Booker celebrations and his ideas about the winner -- Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger. He also discusses the latest TLS, which includes an article on Katherine Mansfield.
Book collecting
14/10/2008
If you enjoy walking through a bookstore, taking a book off the shelf, holding it in your hands, buying it and adding it to your collection at home, you're probably passionate about books. But does that necessarily make you a book collector? The process for an avid collector can involve logistical planning, research, networking and appraisals, as Anthony Knight explains.
The Twelfth Fish by Graham Perrett
14/10/2008
If you were asked to name a politician who was also a novelist, who would you think of? British Conservative Jeffrey Archer perhaps? Or his 19th century predecessor Benjamin Disraeli?
The ALP's Graham Perrett represents the federal seat of Moreton in Queensland and was elected to parliament in November last year. Now Graham is also a published novelist. His first book, The Twelfth Fish, is about a school teacher who is posted to the small town of Lawson in outback Queensland.
Life in Seven Mistakes by Susan Johnson (review) Read Transcript
13/10/2008
The Bartons are a dysfunctional family living on Queensland's Gold Coast. They are the focus of Australian writer Susan Johnson's latest black comedy Life in Seven Mistakes. For The Book Show, reviewer Jo Case read this, Susan Johnson's seventh book, and identifies with its portrayal of messy family relationships and what she calls generational blindness.
On the road with Delia Falconer
13/10/2008
Writer Delia Falconer has edited an anthology called The Penguin Book of the Road, which includes writing from the journals of the explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell to stories by Tim Winton and Helen Garner. In it the road is a place of mystery and danger and a place to dream.
Robert Dessaix: Arabesques Read Transcript
07/10/2008
After a chance visit to the castle where French writer André Gide spent his childhood, Robert Dessaix set off to visit the places where Gide lived out his unconventional ideas about love, sexuality and religion.
Arabesques sees Dessaix journeying from Europe to the edge of the Sahara and features meditations on such varied subjects as why we travel, growing old and illicit passions.
A writer's guide to the marketplace
06/10/2008
Most writers want readers and therefore want to be published. But getting published is notoriously difficult, especially if you haven't done it before. So how to bring yourself to the attention of book, magazine or newspaper publishers? That's the question the Queensland Writers Centre tackles in The Australian Writer's Marketplace.
Nicola Bowery's Goatfish (review)
06/10/2008
There are not, perhaps, as many Australian poets from small towns as there once were. It seems that the pastoral has given way to the inner city. Nicola Bowery from Braidwood NSW is an exception to the rule, an exception to quite a few rules, as Geoff Page discovered in reviewing her second collection of poetry, Goatfish.
Simon Winchester on Joseph Needham and the great secrets of China Read Transcript
03/10/2008
Joseph Needham was a scientist, polyglot, traveller, diplomat, a socialist and a Christian, an exponent of free love, a nudist, a morris dancer and most of all he was passionate about China. As editor and co-author of Science and Civilisation in China, a massive, multi-volume study, he spent more than half a century collecting and compiling evidence that China was the birthplace of everything from chess to cartography, from the stirrup to the suspension bridge. Simon Winchester tells the story of Needham's life and work in Bomb, Book and Compass.
Chris Cleave's Other Hand
23/09/2008
'You can't dance to current affairs,' says British writer Chris Cleave and it's this belief that inspires him to write, to populate the events that clutter the daily news and to give them an emotional landscape.
Chris Cleave is not afraid to tackle large themes in his novels.
His first book Incendiary was about a woman grieving the loss of her husband and son, killed in a fictional terrorist attack in England. Its official publication date was 7 July 2005, the day more than 50 people were killed by terrorist bombings in and around London.
It might have put him off writing but didn't.
Chris Cleave's new novel The Other Hand is another ambitious and complex book dealing with big issues such as refugees, globalisation, political violence and individual ethics.
Remembering David Foster Wallace
23/09/2008
Geordie Williamson considers the legacy of David Foster Wallace, American novelist, essayist and short story writer, who was found dead earlier this month. David Foster Wallace was perhaps best known for his novel Infinite Jest published in 1996, but he also wrote short fiction, which appeared in a range of publications, including GQ, The Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, and The New Yorker. In obituaries David Foster Wallace has been compared to Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce and Laurence Sterne. His contemporaries include Dave Eggers, Jeffrey Eugenides and Rick Moody.
David Foster Wallace's first novel, published in 1986, was The Broom of the System. His latest collection of essays is Consider the Lobster. His last book, a work of non-fiction, was published in June. It's called McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope. He has also written about Rap music and about tennis player Roger Federer.
Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (review) Read Transcript
19/09/2008
British author David Lodge is partially deaf and this experience has worked its way into his latest novel Deaf Sentence. For The Book Show, reviewer David Astle has been reading the latest of David Lodge's offerings.
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi: A Girl Made of Dust
17/09/2008
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi spent the first eleven years of her life in Lebanon before her family moved to England in 1983. It's these early years of her life that provide the impetus for her novel A Girl Made of Dust. It's a story of a young girl, Ruba, who tries to hold her family together through sheer force of will as war and indiscriminate violence creep closer.
Richard Holmes: The Age of Wonder Read Transcript
16/09/2008
The Age of Wonder is the title of literary biographer Richard Holmes' new book, subtitled How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Starting when the young Joseph Banks arrived in Tahiti in 1796 Richard Holmes tells us of the grand explorations and discoveries of the age, including a new planet, a new way of travelling and seeing the world by air, and a new way of looking at the make-up of matter itself. It was an age of wonder not only to those who worked in science but to the great writers and poets of the time such as Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.
An instinct for short stories: Anne Enright Read Transcript
15/09/2008
From the Edinburgh International Book Festival Irish novelist, short story writer and winner of last year's Man Booker Prize, Anne Enright, speaks to Ramona about her instinct for the short story form and about how to craft those sorts of short, sharp tales that pick you up, hold you and then leave you breathless and unsettled.
Patrick French on VS Naipaul Read Transcript
11/09/2008
Patrick French has won awards for his biography of the explorer Francis Younghusband and for his writing on India. The World Is What It Is is his authorised biography of VS Naipaul, which reads like a novel in its arresting study of the man himself, like history as we move through Naipaul's life, and like a work of literary criticism in its examination of Naipaul's writing.
On fragments and dust: Nicolas Rothwell Read Transcript
10/09/2008
As a journalist Nicolas Rothwell has travelled to the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In 2005 he was The Australian newspaper's correspondent in Iraq. He passed through the landscapes of a country at war and visited the ruins of past civilisations, such as the capital of Queen Zenobia. When he came back home to Darwin, he travelled again to the desert, to the Kimberley and Pilbara, which is a landscape he's been travelling through for many years. He has written about these desert journeys, and the thoughts they inspired, in an essay called 'On Fragments and Dust'.
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.
Colm Toibin and Patrick McGrath Read Transcript
05/09/2008
An entertaining pairing of two of the finest writers of fiction at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival -- Patrick McGrath and Colm Toibin. They talk to Ramona about mothers, martyrs and what to do if you're about to be burned at the stake.
Hanif Kureishi on writing, psychoanalysis and relationships Read Transcript
03/09/2008
Hanif Kureishi is a very successful and multi-award winning writer of novels, short stories, screenplays, plays, non-fiction and essays. He spoke to Ramona Koval at the Edinburgh International Book Festival about his new novel Something To Tell You. In the book we meet the middle-aged Dr. Jamal Kahn, a Freudian psychoanalyst who tells us about his journey through 1970's London suburbia, his first love, his family, his history of fears and longings and his guilt about an incident that happened in his youth.
Lisa Gorton: Press Release (review) Read Transcript
03/09/2008
The Mallee district in Victoria is given a painterly rendition in Lisa Gorton's paean to her grandmother, who's from that region. This first collection of poetry Press Release is also about death and drought and uses imagery of intergalactic travel. Lisa Gorton won this year's Victorian Premier's Literary award for poetry for this collection.
Her writing's been described as showing a serious wit. Reviewer Geoff Page was transported by this wit and imagery.
Anya Ulinich - Petropolis Read Transcript
02/09/2008
Anya Ulinich's debut novel Petropolis is a satire about the parallels between the United States and Russia. Sasha Goldberg is part of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia, except she knows nothing about Judaism, is half African and leaves Russia for the US as a mail-order bride, not really the sort of thing the intelligentsia are supposed to do.
Sophie Cunningham, editor of Meanjin
02/09/2008
Most Australians live in the suburbs, yet the suburbs have not fared well in Australian literature. Frequently portrayed as desolate, the dead zone between the cosmopolitan city and the romance of the bush, the suburbs are usually a place from which to escape to a more interesting life. But the suburbs have found a champion in the literary journal Meanjin, with an essay arguing that the urban fringes could be the wellspring of renewal for a greener, more caring Australia.
Nicholas Shakespeare's Secrets of the Sea (repeat) Read Transcript
04/08/2008
Secrets of the Sea is set in a fictional, decaying seaside town in south east Tasmania called Wellington Point. It's where Alex Dove returns from England after his parents die in a car accident. He returns to a large, unprofitable farm and a dusty collection of ships in bottles. There, he meets Merridy, who has her own experience of tragedy -- her brother disappeared as a child. The two marry, they work the land, and Merridy establishes an oyster hatchery, but they are unable to have a child. They drift a little until a storm at sea causes them to give shelter to a strange young man called Kish.
Ramona Koval speaks to Nicholas Shakespeare about Secrets of the Sea and their conversation begins with a reading from the book.
(First broadcast 4/10/2007)
Writers as readers: Helen Garner Read Transcript
30/07/2008
At the recent Sydney Writers' Festival a number of prominent Australian authors talked about what they read and the books that have inspired them. This week we hear from Helen Garner.
Helen Garner's award-winning books include novels, short-stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction, such as The First Stone (1995) and Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004). Her new book is The Spare Room, her first novel in 15 years.
A Paddock in his Head by Brendan Ryan (review) Read Transcript
23/07/2008
Australian poet Brendan Ryan's work is informed by his experience of growing up on a dairy farm in the 1960s and '70s. His first collection, Why I Am Not a Farmer, was published in 2000. Since then his poems have appeared in a number of journals including Best Australian Poetry 2006. Brendan Ryan's latest book, A Paddock in his Head, has poems about the inner suburbs, the Bellarine Peninsula, and travelling overseas, but the central theme is his family's farm. It's reviewed for The Book Show by Geoff Page.
Australian sedition laws revisited
10/07/2008
While no-one has been convicted of sedition in Australia since 1951, the crime of inciting rebellion against a government was given new impetus in 2005 when the Howard government strengthened anti-terrorism laws and revamped the crime of sedition. At the time the legislation created concern within Australia's arts community, particularly among writers, who feared the new measures could restrict freedom of expression. Before the last election the then shadow Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, told The Book Show that if Labor were elected the new government would move immediately to repeal the sedition laws. So far the legislation is still in place and writers and artists continue to be concerned.
Dreams from my Father - Barack Obama (review) Read Transcript
03/07/2008
As well as being a candidate for the United States presidency, Barack Obama is an author. His first book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was originally published in 1995 and has recently been re-released. It was written before Obama became involved in politics and is part meditation on race relations and part personal memoir. In it he writes about his childhhood, his years as an organiser in Chicago, and his family connection with Kenya.
Script editor and former ABC drama producer Rodney Wetherell reviews it for The Book Show.
Richard Mason's new novel The Lighted Rooms
01/07/2008
Contemporary writer Richard Mason is what's known as a publishing phenomenon.
In 1999 his first novel The Drowning People was bought for a large sum, became an international bestseller and won the Italian equivalent of the Booker prize while he was still a student at Oxford University. The amount of attention he received after the book's publication was the beginning of a complicated journey that he says involved some very high points, very low points, two panic attacks and a lot of learning. He also wrote two more novels. The most recent, The Lighted Rooms, is about to be released in Australia.
Christina Lamb: writing reportage, writing stories Read Transcript
30/06/2008
We may think we know the difference between fact and embellishment, between objective reportage and storytelling, but do the two ever go hand in hand? One woman who thinks they should is British journalist Christina Lamb.
Christina Lamb was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year in the British Press Awards last year. She currently works for The Sunday Times in London, and has just released a new book, Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands, published by Harper Collins.
The book is part reportage, part memoir. It includes many of the important articles she's written over the last two decades and her personal reflections on the events that have shaped her extraordinary life and career.
Documenting writers' lives: what should be in the archives? Read Transcript
29/06/2008
Should archival material on writers include lovers' journals, and if so why? How are documents like these useful in determining the critical status of an author's work? Harvard University has stirred up controversy by buying the personal papers of Norman Mailer's long-term mistress Carole Mallory. Scholars and writers alike are asking where institutions should draw the line as to what's important and what isn't when building an archive.
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.
Peter Ho Davies - The Welsh Girl Read Transcript
11/06/2008
Peter Ho Davies is a contemporary author who came to fame as a writer of short stories. His two collections of stories The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love won several prizes, including The New York Times Notable Book of the year. His first novel The Welsh Girl is set in the final months of the Second World War. The book explores the convergence and limits of love and obligation and was listed for the Man Booker prize.
Born in England and educated in the UK and the US, Peter Ho Davies is currently the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.
Kieran Tapsell - a passion for translating Read Transcript
10/06/2008
Translating literature is not something for the faint-hearted. It's time consuming, painstaking work and it throws up dilemmas about the use of language that can tax the most highly developed literary skills. Retired Australian commercial lawyer Kieran Tapsell began teaching himself Spanish in his early fifties and, driven by intellectual curiosity, a love of language, and a desire to share good books with friends who don't speak Spanish, he's now translating the work of major Latin American authors.
Documenting writers' lives: what should be in the archives? Read Transcript
06/06/2008
Harvard University recently bought the personal papers of Norman Mailer's long-term mistress Carole Mallory. Mallory herself approached Harvard and while the amount she received remains secret the acquisition is causing controversy among scholars and writers alike. Should archival material include lovers' journals, and if so why? How is it useful in determining the critical status of the literature itself? Where should institutions draw the line as to what's important and what isn't when preserving the work of famous writers?
Marsupial mysteries Read Transcript
02/06/2008
Fragile Balance: The Extraordinary story of Australian Marsupials gathers together current knowledge about marsupials in one volume. It's written by Professor Christopher Dickman and illustrated by wildlife artist Rosemary Woodford Ganf. Some of the creatures featured are astonishingly beautiful and others are very rare. The book reveals that the daily lives of marsupials can be quite passionate, and that they have unusual abilities to pre-ordain the gender of their offspring.
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.
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.
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 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
Wolf Totem: Man Asian literary prize winner (review) Read Transcript
09/05/2008
The Chinese novel Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong won the inaugural Man Asian prize last year and set a Chinese record for the amount paid for foreign publication rights. Anna Hedigan has been reading the recently released English language translation.
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books
04/05/2008
Robert Silvers talks about a new book from writer, naturalist and co-founder of The Paris Review, Peter Matthiessen. It's called Shadow Country and revolves around the real-life, although somewhat mythological, figure of Edgar J. Watson. Plus a man whose writing is an adjunct to his view of the world and his philanthropic ambitions—George Soros is a billionaire who sees making money as having meaning only when it can make positive changes in the world around him.
Judy Johnson and Captain Jack Read Transcript
01/05/2008
There is often a romanticism attached to stories about the pearling boats that foraged the Torres Straits for trochus shells. But the conditions on these boats were terrible, diving for the shells was dangerous and the frontier environment often attracted eccentric characters to work the boats. This is the brutal world that poet Judy Johnson evokes in her verse novel Jack. Jack Falconer is the captain of a pearl lugger in the Torres Strait in 1938. He's running away from his past but it stays with him while he's out at sea. It torments him and he in turn torments his crew, who can't escape.
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books
30/04/2008
Robert Silvers talks about a new book from writer, naturalist and co-founder of The Paris Review, Peter Matthiessen. It's called Shadow Country and revolves around the real-life, although somewhat mythological, figure of Edgar J. Watson. Plus a man whose writing is an adjunct to his view of the world and his philanthropic ambitions—George Soros is a billionaire who sees making money as having meaning only when it can make positive changes in the world around him.
Zacharey Jane and the sense of self
30/04/2008
Washing up on a remote shore without memory, without a past and with nothing but a stranger for company—that's the fate of two characters in The Lifeboat, a new book from novelist Zacharey Jane. The Lifeboat asks whether we are who we are because of our accumulated experiences, or is there some intrinsic core that defines us?
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.
Travis Holland's The Archivist's Story Read Transcript
27/04/2008
The Archivist's Story dramatises the Stalinist era purges of writers like Isaac Babel and Mandelstam.
The novel is based on the fanciful idea that maybe unknown writings of these authors escaped the incinerator. And that maybe an archivist at the Lubyanka prison, where these writers were interrogated, hid the banished works of purged writers.
In his debut novel, Travis Holland imagines that an archivist, Pavel, in a moment of moral courage, has rescued a manuscript of Isaac Babel's. Pavel is charged with burning the works of great Russian writers out of favour with the regime. This is particularly painful for him, as he used to be a literature teacher at a prestigious school before he wrongly denounced a fellow teacher who then committed suicide. Out of favour with the school, he is given a lowly job at Lubyanka prison in Moscow, ordering the documents of confiscated works to make their destruction more efficient.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Travis Holland about his novel, The Archivist's Story.
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.
Travis Holland's <i>The Archivist's Story</i> Read Transcript
22/04/2008
The Archivist's Story dramatises the Stalinist era purges of writers like Isaac Babel and Mandelstam.
The novel is based on the fanciful idea that maybe unknown writings of these authors escaped the incinerator. And that maybe an archivist at the Lubyanka prison, where these writers were interrogated, hid the banished works of purged writers.
In his debut novel, Travis Holland imagines that an archivist, Pavel, in a moment of moral courage, has rescued a manuscript of Isaac Babel's. Pavel is charged with burning the works of great Russian writers out of favour with the regime. This is particularly painful for him, as he used to be a literature teacher at a prestigious school before he wrongly denounced a fellow teacher who then committed suicide. Out of favour with the school, he is given a lowly job at Lubyanka prison in Moscow, ordering the documents of confiscated works to make their destruction more efficient.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Travis Holland about his novel, The Archivist's Story.
Ian McEwan at the Sydney Opera House
20/04/2008
Recently novelist Ian McEwan was a guest at the Sydney Opera House in the International Speakers Series. In his humorous address he explores the boundary between fact and fiction, he talks about the engagement of readers with ideas and characters and he reads from some of the marvellously cranky letters he has received, correcting facts in his novels.
A criminal conversation: Ruth Rendell and Ian Rankin
18/04/2008
At the 2007 Edinburgh International Book Festival one of England's best-selling and most awarded crime novelists, Ruth Rendell, joined Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin to talk about her work. In this recording they discuss where she finds ideas for plots, how her characters have developed over the years and how she manages to keep up with three different strands of writing: the Wexford series, her psychological crime stories and the novels she writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine.
Talking about books you haven't read Read Transcript
15/04/2008
French literature professor Pierre Bayard created a stir when he released his book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read. Luckily for Bayard, his university colleagues are accustomed to his sense of humour. While you may take away useful tips from Bayard's book, his more serious aim is to provide an alternative understanding about what is meant by 'reading'.
He argues that we can consider books we've skimmed, read but forgotten, or only heard about as part of our literary knowledge, and that perhaps a less strict view of what is meant by reading will encourage more young people to pick up books and be less intimidated by the world of literature.
What animals mean in fiction Read Transcript
15/04/2008
Dr Philip Armstrong, associate professor of English at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, looks at what animals mean in fiction. He argues that animals should not simply be treated as metaphors or mirrors for human meaning, as they often are in literary studies, but should also be granted meaning in and of themselves.
Mark Davis: the health of Australian literary publishing Read Transcript
14/04/2008
Mark Davis is a non-fiction writer and lecturer in publishing and communication at the University of Melbourne. In an article in Overland magazine he discusses evidence that, despite gloomy predictions, Australian publishing is surprisingly healthy. He argues that small independent publishers are crucial if literary publishing is to be kept alive.
Ian McEwan at the Sydney Opera House
11/04/2008
Recently novelist Ian McEwan was a guest at the Sydney Opera House in the International Speakers Series. In his humorous address he explores the boundary between fact and fiction, he talks about the engagement of readers with ideas and characters and he reads from some of the marvellously cranky letters he has received, correcting facts in his novels.
Upton Sinclair
10/04/2008
The success of the film There Will Be Blood has brought the work of American writer Upton Sinclair back to public attention. There Will Be Blood is loosely based on Sinclair's book Oil!, written in 1927. Well known in the early part of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair wrote more than 90 books, the most famous of which was his 1906 novel The Jungle, which dealt with conditions in the US meat packing industry and caused a public uproar. Don Anderson joins Ramona Koval to discuss this early 20th century writer who once had a much more prominent literary and public profile.
Masterworks from the web - an anthology of blogs Read Transcript
03/04/2008
Have you heard of 'astroturfing'? In blog internet language it means 'creating fake grass roots movements' or what about 'sock puppet'? It's a blog alias.
These are just some of the terms New York Times journalist Sarah Boxer has uncovered in her quest to put together an anthology on the ubiquitous blog.
Her book is called Ultimate Blogs: masterworks from the world wide web, and recently she wrote a very funny article about her seemingly impossible task in the
Hari Kunzru's My Revolutions (review) Read Transcript
31/03/2008
Hari Kunzru's new novel My Revolutions explores the complexity of modern day identity politics through a former radical wanted for bombings as a youth. David Astle reviews it for The Book Show.
Memoirs - distinguishing fact from fiction Read Transcript
28/03/2008
The misery memoir has become the 'sexy' genre of the new century, but how much of what we're being told happened to the authors is made up or exaggerated? The American writer James Frey is about to publish his first novel. Frey first came to public attention with his memoir A Million Little Pieces, about his addiction to drugs and alcohol, his incarceration and rehabilitation; a memoir later found to be suspect. Margaret B Jones, author of Love and Consequences, has admitted that she's not of mixed race and was not involved with the Bloods gang. She's a caucasian woman from Los Angeles by the name of Margaret Seltzer. So how far can we trust a memoir to be accurate?
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.
The phenomenon of mobile phone novels
17/03/2008
The New York Times and The Japan Times recently reported that half of the best selling novels in Japan last year were originally composed on mobile phones. That tiny device is apparently responsible for books that are outselling everything else, including a recent Japanese translation of Dostoevsky's classic The Brothers Karamazov. Is it a fad or is it a revolution?
Publishing's carbon footprint
12/03/2008
Like every other part of the economy, the publishing industry is turning its attention to the issue of global warming and looking at ways to reduce its carbon footprint. Two significant industry reports have recently been released in the United States, examining publishing's environmental impact. Ed McCoyd, director of digital policy for the Association of American Publishers, was involved with both publications.
DJ Taylor and the Bright Young People Read Transcript
09/03/2008
The generation of ruling class English young people between 1918 and 1940 was one of the most documented and self-conscious social groups of all time. They were called 'bright young people' by some and 'the lost generation' by Gertrude Stein. Evelyn Waugh wrote about them, Cecil Beaton photographed them and they had some of the most outrageous parties of the Jazz Age. In his latest book English historian, novelist and biographer DJ Taylor has investigated the antics of these bright young things.
Peter Carey
09/03/2008
Peter Carey has written novels, highly acclaimed collections of short stories and a memoir Wrong About Japan. He has won the Booker Prize twice, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize twice and has received three Miles Franklin Awards. His books have won or been short-listed for every major literary award in Australia. Peter Carey talks to Ramona Koval about his latest novel, His Illegal Self.
Peter Carey
06/03/2008
Peter Carey has written novels, highly acclaimed collections of short stories and a memoir Wrong About Japan. He has won the Booker Prize twice, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize twice and has received three Miles Franklin Awards. His books have won or been short-listed for every major literary award in Australia. Peter Carey talks to Ramona Koval about his latest novel, His Illegal Self.
DJ Taylor and the Bright Young People
27/02/2008
The generation of ruling class English young people between 1918 and 1940 was one of the most documented and self-conscious social groups of all time. They were called 'bright young people' by some and 'the lost generation' by Gertrude Stein. Evelyn Waugh wrote about them, Cecil Beaton photographed them and they had some of the most outrageous parties of the Jazz Age. In his latest book English historian, novelist and biographer DJ Taylor has investigated the antics of these bright young things.
