The Book Show

Michael Frayn is a novelist and a playwright who has always presented widely varying kinds of work. Did you ever see his farce Noises Off? A very funny slapstick, and different from his two most recent plays, Copenhagen, about a meeting between two of the founders of quantum mechanics, and Democracy, about the East German spy who worked for Willy Brandt. In the 1960s his first two novels won major prizes, and his latest one, Spies, won him the Whitbread novel award in 2002.

Now I hope you don't take this the wrong way but, in a way, reading his new book is like being cornered at a party by a guy who has been smoking dope and is feeling very profound, and one idea leads to another in a very short space of time. Because in The Human Touch, Michael Frayn returns to his roots in philosophy (that's what he studied as a lad), this time in a non-fiction exploration of questions that have underscored most of his fictional work – the relationship between existence and human consciousness. It's a book which takes at its core philosophy – what can we know? What is real? What do we mean by the self – and would the universe exist if there weren't people here to observe it and measure it and worry about it? He even says 'reality is the child of man's imagination'.

Michael Frayn spoke to me late last week from our studio in London, and I told him then that this book is a surprise and a bit of a mystery for people who are used to reading his comic novels and seeing his plays. So why did he write this book now?

Publications

Title: The Human Touch
Author: Michael Frayn
Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2006
ISBN 0-571-23217-5

Music

CD title: Les Amants
Track title: Tk.3 - The Kingdom (Where Nobody Dies)
Artist: Enrico Pieranunzi & String Quartet
Time to Air: 1934
Duration: 7'56
Composer: Enrico Pieranunzi
CD details: EGEA - SCA106
Publishing/Copyright: EGEA Edizioni Discografiche, 2004

Presenter

Ramona Koval

Producer

Rhiannon Brown