To celebrate Bookclub's 20th anniversary, the programme is inviting guest authors to choose a highlight from the extensive Bookclub archive and in this edition Sebastian Faulks introduces The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Sebastian Faulks was Bookclub's first ever author, talking about his novel Birdsong. He recalls what it was like to step into the unknown on this new programme presented by James Naughtie with an invited group of readers joining in the conversation - just like a book group but with the author present.

Birdsong is war novel and family saga and Faulks had always thought it would work well in discussion. He reflects on the questions he was asked about his own novel and introduces Bookclub with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, remembering the impact it had on him when it was published.

The God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize and is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who must be loved, and how, and how much". The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people's behaviour and their lives, and with a love affair between characters of different backgrounds, shows how cruel the caste system could be.

Arundhati Roy talks about why she had never written fiction since - her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was published in 2017, six years after her appearance on Bookclub. She describes how her training as an architect was useful in the planning of this multi-layered story, with its complex time frames which owe a debt to James Joyce's Ulysses.

Producer : Dymphna Flynn

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2011

Bookclub at 20 is produced for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Belinda Naylor. Show less