The Overseas Student, Cherie Jones, India's Parliamentary District row

We're speaking to all the authors shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 and tonight it's the turn of Cherie Jones. Her novel, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, is set on and around the Barbados beaches of the 80s. Lala braids tourists’ hair in the idyllic setting but her home life is blighted by poverty, violence and lack of choices – and when she has a baby, a dangerous chain of events is set in motion. Cherie Jones talks about this debut novel that has been years in the writing.

Anish Kapoor wrote an article earlier this month decrying what he described as a “hate-filled campaign to de-Islamify India…via the destruction of a world-class monument.” The monument he was referring to was India’s Parliament which he said was “the greatest set of government buildings anywhere in the world.” Professor Sarover Zaidi, from the Jindal School of Art and Architecture, and BBC journalist Geeta Pandey, who is based in the BBC’s Delhi bureau, join Samira to discuss the controversial Central Vista Project which aims to redevelop India’s Parliamentary district.

In Tanika Gupta’s new play The Overseas Student the young man who comes from India to study Law is Mohandas Gandhi. While here he strove to fit in as an English gentleman, and was not politically active. But, the playwright tells Samira that his years living in Hammersmith and walking the streets of London shaped the man who became the great leader in India’s independence movement.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Julian May Studio Engineer: Duncan Hannant

Main image: Esh Alladi in The Overseas Student at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. Image credit: Helen Maybanks