On this week’s Cultural Frontline we consider the pleasure and the pain of literature in lockdown from the perspective of both writers and readers.

Meron Hadero, the first Ethiopian writer to win The Caine Prize for African Writing, tells presenter Datshiane Navanayagam how she found refuge on the page in the pandemic and why she is drawn to write about displacement.

The award-winning Australian novelist Tara June Winch reveals the impact of the coronavirus on her writing routine.

The British actor and Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke discovered the essays of the late British author Jenny Diski during lockdown. Emilia speaks to poet and academic Dr Ian Patterson, who was married to Jenny, to discuss the power of cultural escapism in isolation.

And, after revisiting her own early work during the pandemic, the renowned Russian author Ludmila Ulitskaya looks back on the radical reading that made her a writer in the Soviet Union.

Presenter: Datshiane Navanayagam Producers: Kirsty McQuire, Olivia Skinner, Paul Waters

(Photo: Meron Hadero Credit: Meron Hadero)