Artists at Work

This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, we talk to American writer Brit Bennett about her unputdownable novel, The Vanishing Half.

The Vanishing Half charts the rollercoaster parallel lives of estranged twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds - one black and one white.

Stella and Desiree are identical twins, growing up together in a small, Southern black community. Until, at age sixteen, they run away. Decades later, still separated by many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple stories and generations of one family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Bennett has produced both a riveting, emotional family drama and an unforgettable exploration of the American history of passing as White.

(Picture: Brit Bennett. Photo credit: Emma Trim.)

Next in the series exploring The Exuberance of Youth World Book Club talks to the award-winning American author Ben Lerner about his beguiling debut novel Leaving the Atocha Station.

Brilliant, unreliable, young American poet Adam Gordon is on a fellowship in Madrid, where he is struggling to establish his identity and dazzle his contemporaries.

Instead of studying, his research becomes a meditation on authenticity - are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain, especially the two clever and beautiful women he falls for, as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? In the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid train bombings has he participated in history or merely watch it pass him by?

Winner of the Believer Book Award and a Guardian Book of the Year from 2012 which marked the launch a major new literary talent.

(Picture: Ben Lerner. Photo credit: Catherine Barnett.)

In this year-long celebration of The Exuberance of Youth, World Book Club revisits the multi-prize-winning debut novel Homegoing by the acclaimed Ghanaian author Yaa Gyasi.

The story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a white slave-trader, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history. A novel of remarkable sweep and power, with each character’s life indelibly drawn, Homegoing reveals the devastating legacy of slavery and the resilience of the human spirit.

(Picture: Yaa Gyasi. Photo credit: Peter Hurley/Vilcek Foundation.)

In the season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, World Book Club talks to Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid about his compelling novel, Exit West.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Exit West features Nadia and Saeed, two ordinary young people, attempting to fall in love in a world turned upside down. Civil war is driving them from their homeland and they join the great outpouring of people fleeing a collapsing city, hoping against hope, to find their place in the world. Then something extraordinary happens: doors start appearing, all over the world. They lead to other cities, other countries, other lives. But once you leave there’s no coming back. Readers from around the world put their questions to Mohsin Hamid about this dazzling book.

(Picture: Mohsin Hamid. Photo credit: Jillian Edelstein.)

World Book Café, the programme where writers reveal the secrets of their home cities, goes to Brooklyn.

In a lively and engaging conversation from the heart of the neighbourhood, Asian American authors will share insights into their creative lives, the obstacles they face and the joy they find in words and writing.

Presenter Michelle Fleury will be joined on stage by Brooklyn-based writers Elaine Hsieh Chou, Crystal Hana Kim, Matthew Ortile, Pitchaya Sudbanthad and Jen Lue.

Jennifer Egan answers audience questions about her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. It is a dazzling, exciting book, which plays with form and storytelling traditions. Goon Squad is made up of connected short stories circling around musician and record executive Bennie Salazar, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. It explores their pasts and catapults them into the future using a rich variety of voices and narrative styles. This special edition of World Book Club, presented by Katherine Lanpher, was recorded at Brooklyn Central Library.

(Photo: Jennifer Egan. Credit: Pieter M. Van Hattem)

This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to award-winning American writer Bryan Washington about his moving novel Memorial.

Benson, a Black day-care teacher and Mike, a Japanese-American chef, live together in Houston, but are beginning to wonder why they're a couple. When Mike flies off to visit his seriously ill, estranged father in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother arrives for a visit, Benson is stuck looking after his boyfriend’s mother, in a very unconventional domestic set-up. As both men cope with their difficult circumstances they undergo life-changing transformations, learning more about love, anger, and grief than they had bargained for along the way.

Poignant and profound, Memorial is about family in all its strange forms, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the outer limits of love.

(Picture: Bryan Washington. Photo credit: Louis Do.)

In the latest in World Book Club's season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, Harriett Gilbert talks to Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo about her extraordinary novel, We Need New Names.

A remarkable literary debut shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize We Need New Names is the unflinching, compelling story of a young girl's journey out of Zimbabwe and into America. A coming-of-age story, we follow a young girl named Darling, first as a 10-year-old in Zimbabwe with her friends, navigating a vibrant world of colour, political chaos and ultimately lethal danger. Later as a teenager emigrating to the Midwest United States, she hopes to find a better future living with her Aunt Fostalina in Michigan, only to discover that her options as a young immigrant are perilously few.

(Picture: NoViolet Bulawayo. Photo credit: Nye Lyn Tho.)

A remarkable debut from an exhilarating young new voice, Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted page-turner of a story about race and privilege, centring on a young black babysitter, her well-meaning employer, and a chance encounter that threatens to undo them both.

(Picture: Kiley Reid. Photo credit: David Goddard.)

In the second in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth in this centenary year of the BBC, Harriett Gilbert talks to world-famous Chilean writer Isabel Allende about her extraordinary novel, Eva Luna.

Eva Luna is the story of an orphan who beguiles the world with her remarkable visions, triumphing over the worst of adversities and bringing light, as her name would suggest, to a dark place.

As Eva comes of age and tells her tale, Isabel Allende conjures up a whole complex, unidentified, South American nation— filled with a cast of unforgettable characters, rich, poor, simple, sophisticated, oppressors and oppressed. Against this turbulent background, love, politics and tragedy all play their part in Eva’s life and help shape her into the unforgettable revolutionary and storyteller she becomes.

A novel that celebrates the power of imagination to create a better world.

(Picture: Isabel Allende. Photo credit: Lori Barra.)