Artists at Work

In this month’s edition of BBC World Book Club bestselling American writer Elif Batuman discusses her acclaimed debut novel. ‘The Idiot’ follows Selin, a Turkish-American fresher at Harvard in the mid-1990s, delving into her experiences as she navigates the challenges of university life, grappling with identity, language, and the complexities of relationships, romantic and otherwise. Selin becomes infatuated with Ivan, an older Hungarian mathematics student, and their relationship unfolds primarily through a series of cryptic emails, highlighting the difficulties of virtual communication across cultures. As Selin travels to Europe for a summer teaching job, she continues to struggle with her sense of self, her obsession with Ivan, and the meaning of her experiences. The novel captures the disorienting, often absurd nature of early adulthood, where intellectual exploration meets the messiness of real life and its chaotic emotions. Infused with dry humour and philosophical musings, The Idiot is at heart a playful meditation on the limitation of language, and the gap between theoretical knowledge and lived experience.

German author Ewald Arenz answers readers' questions about his bestselling novel Tasting Sunlight. It’s the moving story of Liss, a reclusive woman who single-handedly runs her family farm, and teenage runaway Sally who takes refuge there. As they work together, Liss and Sally form an unlikely – and nurturing – friendship.

Image: Ewald Arenz (Credit: Tristar Media/Getty Images)

In one of the last broadcast interviews, the acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien, who died aged 93 in July 2024, is in conversation with Kim Chakanetsa. In this bonus episode, shediscusses her final novel, Girl – which tells the story of a young girl in Nigeria who is captured by the Islamist group Boko Haram – the effects of lockdown and her love of writing and literature from around the world…

Another chance to hear Harriett Gilbert talking to bestselling American writer Paul Auster, who died earlier this year on 30 April 2024.

Paul Auster joined Harriett in 2012, with a literary festival audience and readers from around the world, to discuss his acclaimed work The New York Trilogy. In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own. Each interconnected tale exploits the elements of standard detective fiction to achieve an entirely new genre that was ground-breaking when it was published four decades ago.

In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of identity and what it means to be human.

Hear what readers made of Paul and his novel and what happened when another Paul Auster stood up to introduce himself to the Paul Auster on the stage – a very New York Trilogy occurrence.

Presenter: Harriett Gilbert

(Photo: Paul Auster interview with Stephen Sackur in New York, 2021)

Following the death of the Irish author Edna O’Brien in July 2024, another chance to hear a 2008 World Book Club episode in which she talked to Harriett Gilbert and an audience of readers about her renowned debut novel The Country Girls. Banned in her homeland on publication, it has become one of O’Brien’s most admired and renowned works.

Producer: Oliver Jones

Image: Edna O'Brien, pictured in 2009 at the Hay Festival (Credit: David Levenson/Getty Images)

Toronto is a bustling city on Lake Ontario which is growing at an astonishing rate. Almost a third of Torontonians have arrived in the last decade and more than half were born outside of Canada. The city’s Mohawk name is , which means “the place on the water where the trees are standing".

Kevin Kwan discusses his internationally best-selling novel, Crazy Rich Asians, with readers from around the world.

Chinese-American academic Rachel Chu lives a modest and happy life with her boyfriend and fellow academic Nick. But when Nick invites her home to Singapore to meet the family, everything changes – starting with the first class flights.

Saturated with wildly wealthy and deliciously dysfunctional super-elites, this ironic and funny rom-com makes a perfect escapist summer read.

(Photo: Kevin Kwan is seen in midtown on 24 August, 2023, New York City. Credit: Raymond Hall/Getty Images)

In Miriam Toews’s novel, Women Talking, the women of a remote Mennonite colony are hold secret meetings to talk about the crimes of the men who they live alongside. After years of being told that they were suffering from hysterical delusions, the women “came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.”

Women Talking is a response to the real life events on a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009.

Miriam Toews talks to World Book Club readers in Toronto and around the world about her unique and powerful story about the power of language and solidarity.

(Photo: Miriam Toews, Canadian author at the Hay Festival, 4 June, 2022 in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Credit: David Levenson/Getty Images)

Percival Everett will be discussing his Booker-shortlisted novel The Trees. This powerful and fiercely funny satire centring on revenge and racial justice in America shifts genres between police procedural, magical realism and horror with wit and consummate skill. Percival Everett addresses some of America’s darkest history with an unusual mix of playfulness and political seriousness.

Award-winning Australian novelist Charlotte Wood joins Harriett Gilbert to answer questions from readers around the world about her novel, The Weekend.

It's a story of grief and friendship; three women meet to clear their deceased friend’s beach house and find themselves uncovering secrets and stirring up memories.

(Image: Charlotte Wood. Photo credit: Carly Earl.)