World Book Club

This month World Book Club talks to internationally celebrated Indian writer Anuradha Roy about her much-loved novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing.Spanning three generations of an Indian family from the turn of the 20th century to India's partition An Atlas of Impossible Longing traces the intertwining lives of the inhabitants of a vast and isolated house on the outskirts of a small town in Bengal. Centred on sensitive foundling orphan boy Mukunda and the wild and motherless daughter of the house, Bakul, the novel charts the unshakeable but oft-threatened bond that grows between them in a world where they feel abandoned by everyone else. A haunting and compelling story of love, loss, grief and the power of home.(Picture: Anuradha Roy. Photo credit: fmantovani.)

Epic in scope, Away is the captivating story of young Lillian Leyb, whose family is destroyed in a horrific Russian pogrom and who comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When she hears that her daughter might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, toward Siberia. A novel encompassing the searing experiences of migration and exile, motherhood and mourning, Away is at once heart-rending, nail-biting and completely unforgettable.(Photo: Amy Bloom. Photo credit: Elena Seibert)

This month World Book Club talks to British writer Sarah Waters about her chart-topping novel, Tipping the Velvet.Celebrating twenty years since its first publication Tipping the Velvet is a bawdy, historical, lesbian romance, following the startling career of Nan King, oyster girl from Whitstable turned music-hall star turned rent boy. Star-struck and infatuated with actress Kitty Butler Nan starts up a double act with her idol both on and off the stage. But when Kitty, hankering after a more conventional life, spurns Nan in favour of marriage to her manager, a devastated Nan is propelled into a series of ever more erotic excursions and ultimately a struggle for survival. (Photo credit: Charlie Hopkinson.)

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)

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)

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.)

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.)

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)

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)

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)