World Book Club

Paul Theroux, acclaimed American author of bestselling travel books, is interviewed about his book Deep South. He explores the contradictions and unique characters he encountered while traveling through the region. Theroux reflects on the impact of poverty, racial segregation, and urban decay, but also shares stories of warmth and generosity from the people he met. He discusses the significance of churches and the cultural importance of guns. Theroux also delves into the diverse identities within the South and the impact of the blues in Mississippi. The podcast concludes with a reflection on the writer's portrayal of individuals and a haunting visit to a desolate ghost town in South Carolina.

World Book Café travels to Paris to meet some of the French capital’s newest writers. Authors Mahir Guven, Blandine Rinkel, Laurent Petitmangin and Capucine Delattre discuss taking on the literary establishment and finding new ways to express themselves. Like many places in the world, questions of equality, diversity and freedom of expression are top of the agenda in France. But it is complicated; the ideal of universalism - meaning every citizen is considered to be the same regardless of class or ethnicity - is at the heart of the French republic. Does this 'universalism' leave space for the 21st Century desire to celebrate difference, and how can writing help reconcile these complex ideas? Image: The skyline of Paris, 9 December 2022 (Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

This month World Book Club visits Paris, France to be guests of the iconic bookshop on the Left Bank of the River Seine, Shakespeare & Co. There Harriett Gilbert and a bookshop audience talk to acclaimed French writer Marie Darrieussecq about her extraordinary novel Pig Tales.Pig Tales is the story of a young woman who works at a shady Parisian massage parlour, becoming a favourite with her lustful clients until, that is, she slowly and alarmingly metamorphoses into a pig. A dark feminist fable of political and sexual corruption, and a grim warning of what can happen in a society without a soul, Pig Tales scandalised its readers when it first came out and became the most popular first novel published in decades.(Picture: Marie Darrieussecq. Photo credit: Charles Freger.)

Driving too fast through Israel’s Negev desert in his SUV after a long day in the hospital, Dr Eitan Green accidentally hits a lone Eritrean man on the empty moonlit road, killing him instantly.Panic stricken he drives off instead of calling for help and confessing what he’s done. A decision that will change the course of his life irrevocably because the dead man’s wife, the elegant, enigmatic Sikrit, knows what happened. In atonement for his crime Sikrit insists the doctor start treating Eritrean refugees after his hospital dayshifts at clandestine makeshift hospitals in the desert.A nail-biting and morally devastating drama of guilt, racism, shame and desire which stares unflinchingly at the darkness inside us all, and asks the reader: what would you have done?(Picture: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen. Photo credit: Alon Siga.)

A Passage North explores the impact of the vicious Sri Lankan civil war between Tamil and Sinhalese which tore Sri Lanka apart for two and a half decades before a fragile ceasefire was finally reached in 2009. When Krishan learns that his grandmother’s former carer Rani has died he makes the long journey north to attend the funeral across a country still traumatised and scarred by its recent past.Written with precision and grace, A Passage North is a poignant memorial for the missing and the dead, and an unsettling meditation on what it means to have observed the war from afar rather than to have been personally caught up in its horrors.(Picture: Anuk Arudpragasam. Photo credit: Ruvin De Silva.)

World Book Club travels to The Crucible Theatre in Sheffield in England, as guests of The Off the Shelf Festival and talks to local prize-winning Sheffield writer Sunjeev Sahota about his compelling novel, The Year of the Runaways.Voyaging from India to England, from childhood to the present day, Sunjeev Sahota's heart-rending novel follows a group of young men each in flight from India and desperately searching for a new and fulfilling life in the northern British town of Sheffield. Tarlochan is silent about his past in Bihar, and Avtar has a secret that binds him to protect the traumatized Randeep. Randeep has a visa wife living separately in a flat nearby, who constantly dreads a surprise call from the immigration authorities.An unforgettable story of dignity in the face of adversity and of the enduring power of the human spirit.(Picture: Sunjeev Sahota. Photo credit: Simon Revill.)

This month as World Book Club continues its year-long season celebrating the Exuberance of Youth it also celebrates the 20th anniversary of the programme.To mark this happy occasion World Book Club are guests of the London Literature Festival at the South Bank Centre on the River Thames and Harriett Gilbert talks to Bangladeshi-born British novelist Tahmima Anam about her enthralling novel, A Golden Age.Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, A Golden Age is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith and unexpected heroism in the middle of chaos. Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence we follow Rehana, a mother struggling to protect her children as the civil war intensifies. Wanting only to keep them safe she finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma in a war that will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh.(Picture: Tahmima Anam. Photo credit: Abeer Y Hoque.)

This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, we talk to American writer Brit Bennett about her unputdownable novel, The Vanishing Half.The Vanishing Half charts the rollercoaster parallel lives of estranged twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds - one black and one white.Stella and Desiree are identical twins, growing up together in a small, Southern black community. Until, at age sixteen, they run away. Decades later, still separated by many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?Weaving together multiple stories and generations of one family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Bennett has produced both a riveting, emotional family drama and an unforgettable exploration of the American history of passing as White.(Picture: Brit Bennett. Photo credit: Emma Trim.)

Next in the series exploring The Exuberance of Youth World Book Club talks to the award-winning American author Ben Lerner about his beguiling debut novel Leaving the Atocha Station.Brilliant, unreliable, young American poet Adam Gordon is on a fellowship in Madrid, where he is struggling to establish his identity and dazzle his contemporaries.Instead of studying, his research becomes a meditation on authenticity - are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain, especially the two clever and beautiful women he falls for, as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? In the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid train bombings has he participated in history or merely watch it pass him by?Winner of the Believer Book Award and a Guardian Book of the Year from 2012 which marked the launch a major new literary talent.(Picture: Ben Lerner. Photo credit: Catherine Barnett.)

In this year-long celebration of The Exuberance of Youth, World Book Club revisits the multi-prize-winning debut novel Homegoing by the acclaimed Ghanaian author Yaa Gyasi.The story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a white slave-trader, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history. A novel of remarkable sweep and power, with each character’s life indelibly drawn, Homegoing reveals the devastating legacy of slavery and the resilience of the human spirit.(Picture: Yaa Gyasi. Photo credit: Peter Hurley/Vilcek Foundation.)