Artists at Work

By BBC World ServiceSociety & Culture

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Artists at Work episodes

October 06, 2018 Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
This month on World Book Club award-winning British writer Kate Atkinson discusses her celebrated novel Life After Life. In it Atkinson poses the question: What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born and then dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.
Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?
Presented by Harriett Gilbert.
50 min
September 02, 2018 James Ellroy - American Tabloid
On this month’s World Book Club, as he turns seventy, another chance to hear acclaimed American writer James Ellroy, who over a span of fifteen years worked on a massive fictional chronicle of 1960s America.
American Tabloid, the first of the three books, exposes the underbelly of a country on the threshold of Kennedy's golden age, and follows three men close to the tentacles of power in a conspiracy with the Mafia that leads to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the assassination of JFK in Dallas. Brutally brilliant and profane, the book bursts at the seams with crooked policemen, corrupt politicians, mobsters and hitmen, all driven by a desire for power, money and the settling of old scores.
Image: James Ellroy (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
50 min
August 05, 2018 Hilary Mantel: Bring Up the Bodies
This month’s World Book Club broadcasts from the Man Booker 50 Festival at the Southbank Centre, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the renowned prize.
In the World Book Club chair is the double-Booker prize-winning British writer Hilary Mantel discussing 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.
50 min
July 08, 2018 Anuradha Roy: An Atlas of Impossible Longing
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.)
50 min
June 06, 2018 Amy Bloom: Away
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)
51 min
May 14, 2018 Sarah Waters: Tipping the Velvet
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.)
50 min
May 14, 2018 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)
51 min
March 12, 2018 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)
50 min
February 04, 2018 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.)
49 min
January 08, 2018 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.)
50 min