The Book Show

Kate Grenville, Craig Silvey, Susanna Clarke, Nardi Simpson, Damon Galgut, Christos Tsiolkas and more on their prize-winning books. Plus, former winners Colson Whitehead, Bernardine Evaristo and Anthony Doerr on the impact of winning a major prize.

Unlike many authors, Jodi Picoult decided to take on COVID-19 in Wish You Were Here, because Picoult says, "we need to remember everything we got wrong while we were learning what this disease is".

Also, the salvation of poetry in Brendan Cowell's Plum and The Kindness of Birds by Filipino Australian writer Merlinda Bobis.

Scottish crime writer Val McDermid's new book, 1979, is the beginning of a new series inspired by her own experience as a newspaper journalist in the 1970s and 80s.

Also, to celebrate International Day of People With Disability we have some recommendations for speculative fiction novels that centre disabled characters, and

"I never sunk into complacency in any aspect of my life." Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo on her latest book, Manifesto, about her unconventional path to success.

Also, Stella Prize winner Charlotte Wood on cultivating a rich inner life in The Luminous Solution, and the 2021 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, on how he became a writer.

"I can't separate the erotic and the sensual from the beautiful." Melbourne Prize for Literature winner, Christos Tsiolkas on his latest novel 7½ which explores what it means to be a writer and the role of beauty in fiction.

Also, Rebecca Starford and Steven Carroll on the real life characters that inspired their World War II novels, The Imitator and O.

Author of Burial Rites and The Good People, Hannah Kent says she wanted to look at human connection in her latest novel Devotion. It's another historical novel but is a love story about two girls whose love transcends rules, religion, and even crosses an ocean.

Also, the British author, Susanna Clarke, was the winner of this year's Women's Prize for Fiction for her novel Piranesi. She talks about writing the book while living with a chronic illness.

Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut on his award winning novel The Promise.

"Everyday could be a day of unthinkable richness if we just keep still, attend and be present to what the place that we live in wants to do." Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers talks about the power of wilderness to centre his characters in Bewilderment, his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel.

Also, two time winner of the Miles Franklin, Michelle de Kretser, on her new book, Scary Monsters which is a book in two parts, with two front covers, and is an exploration of the migrant experience.

"The journey is the oldest story known to humanity", says bestselling American author Amor Towles, whose third book is based on this archetypal narrative and takes a group of lost boys on an unpredictable road trip in The Lincoln Highway.

Also, Booker Prize shortlisted author Anuk Arudpragasam with A Passage North and Vietnamese American Monique Truong's exploration of Lafcadio Hearn, the 19th century Creole cookbook author and Japanese folktale collector, in The Sweetest Fruits.

Liane Moriarty's latest novel is Apples Never Fall and as another TV adaptation of her work wraps us, she is adamant she will never write books with a view to adaptation.

Also, British-Turkish Elif Shafak's inventive The Island of Missing Trees set in a divided Cyprus and Booker shortlisted author Damon Galgut's equally inventive, The Promise.