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World Book Club

Latest episodes

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May 14, 2018 • 50min

Celeste Ng: Everything I Never Told You

Presenter Lawrence Pollard talks to chart-topping Chinese-American writer Celeste Ng and an audience gathered in the local Boston radio Newsfeed Café in the Boston Public Library about her bestselling novel Everything I Never Told You.In 1970s small-town Ohio Lydia is the favorite child of parents, determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Chinese-American Lee family together is destroyed. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, racism and longing, Everything I Never Told You uncovers the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.(Photo: Celeste Ng. Credit: Kevin Day Photography)
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Mar 12, 2018 • 49min

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Award-winning Dominican American writer Junot Diaz talks to World Book Club on location in Boston, US, about his wildly popular novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Moving across generations and continents, from the dark and tragic past in the Dominican Republic to struggles and dreams in suburban America the novel chronicles Oscar and his family’s search for love and belonging.(Photo: Junot Diaz attends the Norman Mailer Center's Fifth Annual Benefit Gala. Credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images)
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Feb 4, 2018 • 49min

Jackie Kay: Trumpet

This month World Book Club talks to Scottish poet Laureate Jackie Kay about her award winning novel, Trumpet.When legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody dies an extraordinary secret is revealed, one that he shared in life only with his beloved wife, Millie. On learning the truth about his father, their adopted son Colman is devastated and becomes easy prey for a tabloid journalist. Besieged by the press and overwhelmed with grief, Millie withdraws to their remote seaside home where she seeks solace in treasured memories of her fiercely private marriage. The reminiscences of those who knew Joss Moody render a complex and moving portrait of two people whose shared life was founded on an intricate lie that preserved their family, and their rare, unconditional love.(Photo credit: Denise Else.)
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Jan 8, 2018 • 49min

Agatha Christie

This month World Book Club comes from the Belgium capital Brussels for an Agatha Christie special.The programme visits the Bibliotheca Wittockiana to discuss one of the bestselling crime novels of all time: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie in which that shrewdest of detectives Hercule Poirot hunts for a killer aboard one of the world’s most luxurious passenger trains. To help untangle this fiendish puzzleknot and discuss the enduring popularity of the Queen of Crime are acclaimed crime novelist Sophie Hannah who has brought the renowned sleuth back to life again with her sequels, and James Prichard, great grandson of Agatha herself.(Picture: Agatha Christie at an event in 1967. Photo credit: BBC.)
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Dec 3, 2017 • 49min

Richard Flanagan: Narrow Road to the Deep North

Best-selling Australian writer Richard Flanagan talks about his Booker prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.This unforgettable novel about the cruelty of war and the tenuousness of love and life tells the story of captive Australian soldiers forced into hard labour, working on the Burmese railway during and after World War Two. At its heart is one day in a Japanese slave labour camp in August 1943 which builds to a horrific climax as surgeon Dorrigo Evans battles and too often fails in his quest to save the lives of his fellow POWs. (Photo: Writer Richard Flanagan. Credit: Joel Saget)
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Nov 5, 2017 • 50min

Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty

Best-selling British writer Alan Hollinghurst talks about his Booker prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty.In the summer of 1983 20-year-old graduate Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the glamorous Notting Hill home of ambitious Tory MP Gerald Fedden. Nick’s glittering party and politics filled life is contrasted with the realities of his sexuality and gay life in London of the mid 1980s. Against a backdrop of Thatcherite politics and the emerging Aids crisis of that decade The Line of Beauty explores themes of hypocrisy, homosexuality, madness and privilege.(Photo: Alan Hollinghurst. Credit: Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images)
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Oct 9, 2017 • 50min

Jane Gardam - Old Filth

On this month’s World Book Club British writer Jane Gardam discusses her award-winning novel Old Filth with the studio audience at Broadcasting House and listeners from around the world. Edward Feathers is a child of the Raj. His earliest memories are of his beloved Amah, a teenage Malay girl whom he is soon torn away from when he is sent back to be educated in pre-war England, so-called Home, where he is boarded out with strangers.A career as a successful lawyer in Southeast Asia later earns him the nickname Old Filth, FILTH being an acronym for Failed In London Try Hong Kong. Yet through it all Feathers has carried the wounds of his emotionally hollow childhood, wounds he now sets out to confront as an elderly widow.(Photo: Jane Gardam. Credit: Victoria Salman)
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Sep 3, 2017 • 50min

Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture

This month World Book Club is celebrating its 15th birthday and has come to where it all began – in September 2002 - The Edinburgh Book Festival, to talk to Irish literary superstar Sebastian Barry about his poignant and much garlanded novel The Secret Scripture. Now in her hundredth year Roseanne McNulty, once the most beautiful girl in County Sligo, has long been locked up in an mental asylum for reasons which gradually become clear as she decides to put down a secret record of her remarkable story.Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict The Secret Scripture is at once an epic story of love and heart-rending betrayal and a vivid reminder of the stranglehold that the Catholic Church had on individual lives for much of the twentieth century.(Picture courtesy of The Irish Times.)
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Aug 6, 2017 • 50min

Delphine de Vigan - No and Me

With an IQ that’s off-the-scale and a hyper-active mind 13-year-old Lou feels out of place amongst the beautiful, confident teenagers in her class. She finds no comfort at home as her mother is in the throes of a profound depression. Her life changes when she meets No, an older homeless girl, whom she immediately feels an affinity with. Along with a classmate, Lucas, Lou tries to help No to build a life away from the streets. However, No's emotional scars run deep and she pushes Lou's friendship and trust to the limits.Both poignant and funny, this haunting novel explores homelessness, friendship, love and loss.(Photo: Delphine de Vigan. Credit: Delphine Jouandeau)
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Jul 5, 2017 • 49min

Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

This month World Book Club is talking to chart-topping Australian writer Tim Winton about his unforgettable novel Cloudstreet.Winner of the Miles Franklin Award and recognised as one of the greatest works of Australian literature, Cloudstreet is Tim Winton's sprawling, comic epic about luck and love, fortitude and forgiveness, and the magic of the everyday.Precipitated by separate personal tragedies, two poor families flee their rural homes to share a "great continent of a house", Cloudstreet, in a suburb of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united and religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords.Over the next twenty years they struggle and strive, laugh and curse, come apart and pull together under the same roof, and try to make the best of their lives.(Picture: Tim Winton. Credit: BBC.)

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