
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Michael Berkeley talks to the writer Preti Taneja about her wide-ranging love of music, from Indian gazals and ragas to Vivaldi and Shostakovich.
Preti Taneja’s debut novel We That Are Young won last year’s Desmond Elliott prize and huge critical acclaim, after being rejected as ‘commercially unviable’ by multiple publishers in both London and Delhi.
It’s a reworking of King Lear, set in contemporary India, and tells the story of a battle for power within a rich and turbulent Delhi family.
Before she found success as a novelist Preti worked as a journalist, as a human rights campaigner, and as a teacher of writing in places as diverse as universities, prisons, youth charities and refugee camps - and she chooses a song by Ilham al Madfai that reminds her of working in Jordan with minority communities who had fled the war in Iraq.
Preti talks about the music that reminds her of childhood holidays in Delhi, how she uses music in her writing, and why King Lear resonates so clearly in the India of today.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3, produced by Jane Greenwood.
 By BBC Radio 3
By BBC Radio 34.4
3131 ratings
Michael Berkeley talks to the writer Preti Taneja about her wide-ranging love of music, from Indian gazals and ragas to Vivaldi and Shostakovich.
Preti Taneja’s debut novel We That Are Young won last year’s Desmond Elliott prize and huge critical acclaim, after being rejected as ‘commercially unviable’ by multiple publishers in both London and Delhi.
It’s a reworking of King Lear, set in contemporary India, and tells the story of a battle for power within a rich and turbulent Delhi family.
Before she found success as a novelist Preti worked as a journalist, as a human rights campaigner, and as a teacher of writing in places as diverse as universities, prisons, youth charities and refugee camps - and she chooses a song by Ilham al Madfai that reminds her of working in Jordan with minority communities who had fled the war in Iraq.
Preti talks about the music that reminds her of childhood holidays in Delhi, how she uses music in her writing, and why King Lear resonates so clearly in the India of today.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3, produced by Jane Greenwood.

7,698 Listeners

159 Listeners

1,042 Listeners

5,429 Listeners

1,794 Listeners

1,781 Listeners

1,084 Listeners

1,921 Listeners

2,079 Listeners

513 Listeners

109 Listeners

47 Listeners

132 Listeners

163 Listeners

242 Listeners

11 Listeners

37 Listeners

4,175 Listeners

3,187 Listeners

733 Listeners

30 Listeners

109 Listeners

45 Listeners

517 Listeners

33 Listeners