| Background ⋅ BBC ⋅ Books ⋅ Cartoons ⋅ Economy ⋅ Environment ⋅ Health ⋅ History ⋅ Language ⋅ Religion ⋅ Science ⋅ Special Reports ⋅ Technology ⋅ Travel |
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
For decades, the writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya was banned in the Soviet Union. She wrote stories about domestic despair and Soviet censors demanded optimism. Petrushevskaya’s writing was just too dark, but today she’s a living legend in Russia. She recently visited New York City and sang for an audience of Russian émigrés. Kiera Feldman reports. Download MP3
The family of Swedish crime author Stieg Larsson, who died before his “Millennium” trilogy became a cult hit, has offered Larsson’s partner a settlement to end a dispute over his inheritance, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reported. The “Millennium” trilogy has become a worldwide phenomenon. Marco Werman speaks with Swedish journalist Martin Jönsson about the controversy in today’s show. (Audio available after 5PM Eastern)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Herta Müller has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature. The Romanian born author is renowned for her books based on life under the harsh regime of the dictator Ceausescu. Müller was born in 1953 in the German-speaking town of Nitzkydorf in Romania. Jeb Sharp profiles the German author. Download MP3
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Marco Werman talks with our book critic Christopher Merrill about a new novel called “Blood Safari” from South African writer Deon Meyer. Download MP3
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Download MP3Click here for more information about the book.
Here’s a short video of a part of the interview:
An Interview with Author Tracy Kidder from Clark Boyd on Vimeo.
Author Frank McCourt published his first book in his sixties. The successful “Angela’s Ashes” portrayed the slums of Limerick, Ireland and became controversial in Ireland.
Listen
Eileen Battersby’s article on Frank McCourt in The Irish Times
It may be summer, but your brain needn’t go on vacation. My summer list of fiction in translation that demands and repays close attention.
Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks gets picks for summer reading from The World’s book critic, Christopher Merrill.
Listen
It’s summer, so we’ve asked The World’s book critic Chris Merril for some good beach reads – or for those of us in parts of the country that are totally water logged, good rainy day reads. Chris never fails to connect us with good books from all over the globe – read his recommendations here.
In the Geo Quiz, we were looking for the name and author of a book set ‘in the naked desert, under the indifferent heavens.’ The book is The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, and the author is T.E. Lawrence, The answers come by way of bookseller David Delvecchio.
Listen
Jose Manuel Prieto’s “Rex” is an adventure through time: not historical time, or physical time, so much as literary time, the dreamy, static continuum of impressions and formulations recorded across centuries and civilizations.
All great anti-utopian novels focus on a disturbing aspect of the present, pushing it to its most horrific conclusions. In “1984,” it’s the panoptic police state. In “Brave New World,” the sexualization and Americanization of England. In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the subjugation of women through the sanctification of childbirth. In Ninni Holmqvist’s “The Unit,” the issue in question is the way the childless, especially the childless elderly, are looked down upon as irrelevant.
Host Marco Werman reports on this year’s winner of Australia’s top literary prize. It’s called “Breath” by Tim Winton, and it’s a rarity, a world class novel about surfing.
Listen