Artists at Work

By BBC World ServiceSociety & Culture

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Artists at Work episodes

May 04, 2020 Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies
This month World Book Club marks the recent worldwide publication of The Mirror and The Light by treating you to a repeat of our memorable edition of the programme with the double-Booker prize-winning British writer Hilary Mantel.
Recorded two years ago at the Man Booker 50 Festival at the South Bank Centre, which was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the renowned prize, Hilary Mantel discusses the second volume in her acclaimed series of novels about Thomas Cromwell. Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history and the downfall of Queen Anne Boleyn whom King Henry VIII had battled for seven years to marry.
Join writer Hilary Mantel, presenter Harriett Gilbert and readers at the South Bank Centre and around the globe for a World Book Club for an hour during which the words Corona or Virus are not mentioned even once.
50 min
April 06, 2020 Fatima Bhutto - The Shadow of the Crescent Moon
Long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Bhutto’s lyrical debut novel unfolds over the course of one morning in Mir Ali, a small town in Pakistan's Tribal Areas close to the Afghan border.
Set during the American invasion of Afghanistan, it chronicles the lives of five young people trying to live and love in a world on fire. On a day seemingly like any other, three brothers meet for breakfast before going their separate ways. Three hours later their day will end in devastating circumstances.
(Photo: Fatima Bhutto)
50 min
March 08, 2020 Leïla Slimani - Lullaby
French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani joins Harriett Gilbert in the Radio Theatre at the BBC and readers from around the world to talk about her novel Lullaby, the devastating story of a nanny, Louise, who kills two children in her care.
The book – an international bestseller – opens with this horrific crime then travels back in time to discover why an apparently perfect nanny turned into a cold blooded murderer. Through the lives of Louise and her employers, Slimani explores Paris’s economy and society, depicting a city where poverty and wealth live side by side and people know little about one another.
The third programme in World Book Club’s year celebrating international women’s writing, this novel raises urgent questions about women’s lives and maternal instincts, and what is expected of them.
(Photo: Leïla Slimani. Photo credit: Catherine Hélie/Editions Gallimard.)
50 min
February 03, 2020 Petina Gappah - The Book of Memory
Harriett Gilbert is joined by Zimbabwean novelist Petina Gappah for this month’s edition of World Book Club, continuing 2020’s celebration of women’s writing.
Petina will be answering questions from readers around the world about her novel The Book Of Memory. It’s narrated by Memory, an albino woman convicted of murdering her wealthy white guardian, who took her away from life in the townships when she was a child. In this testimony, written from her prison cell, Memory looks back over her life and confronts the events that led to this conviction.
(Photo: Petina Gappah. Credit: Marina Cavazza)
50 min
January 08, 2020 Naomi Alderman - The Power
Naomi Alderman talks about her extraordinary novel The Power which imagines that women suddenly develop an electrifying strength, putting them firmly in control - of everything. The new order spreads around the globe, liberating women from enslavement and subjugation but also freeing their darker ambitions. It’s a pacey read, teeming with characters and plot lines. Alderman focusses on Roxy, the teenage daughter of a London crime lord; Tunde a Nigerian journalist chasing the story around the globe, and in America Ali, a young orphan who becomes a spiritual leader and Margot, an ambitious politician who sees the opportunities the new world order offers her.
In this edition of World Book Club, Naomi Alderman talks about the inequalities which inspired her story and her hopes for the future.
(Photo credit: Justine Stoddard.)
50 min
December 09, 2019 Jenny Erpenbeck - Visitation
This month World Book Club is in Germany marking the 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall with a programme from the St George’s Bookshop in the heart of the capital. We’re speaking with one of the country’s greatest living writers Jenny Erpenbeck about her highly acclaimed novel, Visitation.
Visitation’s central character is a beguiling house on the forested banks of a lake in Brandenburg near Berlin, which is inhabited by various occupants, one dislodging the next over the course of a turbulent century of upheaval and calamity. Encompassing the years from the Weimar Republic, through World War II to the subsequent Soviet-led Communist regime, and finally to reunification and its aftermath, Visitation forms a literary mosaic of the horrors of twentieth century German history filtered through the beauty of one house and the landscape it’s rooted in.
(Image: Jenny Erpenbeck. Credit: Katharina Behling.)
50 min
November 05, 2019 David Nicholls - Us
David Nicholls talks about his internationally successful novel Us.
Almost three decades after their improbable relationship first blossomed in London biochemist Douglas and his attractive artist wife Connie live seemingly happily enough with their moody 17-year-old son, Albie just outside London. Then Connie drops a bombshell: she thinks she wants a divorce.
Devastated but determined to fight to save their marriage, Douglas insists that the family stick to a previously planned Grand Tour of Europe where he secretly hopes to win his wife and son back.
Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest point of view, Us is the bittersweet but often very funny story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves and learn how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.
(Photo: David Nicholls. Credit: Sophia Spring)
50 min
October 07, 2019 Héctor Abad - Oblivion
The Colombian novelist and journalist Héctor Abad discusses his memoir Oblivion, a heart-breaking tribute to his late father. Héctor Abad Gómez was a medical doctor, professor and human rights campaigner in the city of Medellín, Colombia, whose criticism of the Colombian regime led to his brutal murder by paramilitaries in 1987. One of the most exquisitely written accounts of profound love between a father and son in modern literature, Oblivion paints a picture of a remarkable man who followed his conscience and paid for it with his life during one of the darkest periods in Latin America’s recent history.
Presented by Harriet Gilbert
49 min
September 09, 2019 Ann Cleeves - Raven Black
British writer Ann Cleeves discusses Raven Black, the haunting first novel in her award-winning Shetland crime series, with presenter Harriett Gilbert, a studio audience and readers around the world.
On a remote Scottish island in the Shetland Isles, a teenage girl is found dead in a snow-covered field. Some years ago, another young girl disappeared in mysterious circumstances near to his house, but the body was never found. As Inspector Perez and local police pursue their investigation a veil of suspicion is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years neighbours nervously lock their doors, whilst a killer lives on in their midst.
49 min
August 05, 2019 Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen
Acclaimed Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma talks about his novel The Fishermen. Shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, The Fishermen tells the story of four young brothers who defy their authoritarian father to go fishing in a forbidden river on the outskirts of the western Nigerian town where they live. After a local madman issues a shocking prophecy that the oldest brother will be killed by one of the others, the strong family bonds begin to break down and a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions is set in train. With this bold and powerful debut, Chigozie Obioma has emerged as one of the most original new voices of modern African literature.
50 min