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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

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Private Passions Podcast

Private Passions

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Hisham Matar

29/08/2010

Hisham Matar

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Hisham Matar

Michael Berkeley is joined by is Libyan author Hisham Matar.

Michael Berkeley is joined by is Libyan author Hisham Matar. His choices include Arabic music as well as Chopin, Sibelius, Ligeti, Schubert and Bob Dylan.

Michael Berkeley's guest is the novelist Hisham Matar, who was born in New York to an affluent Libyan family. They moved back to Tripoli when he was three, but six years later his father was accused by the revolutionary government of being a reactionary, and the family was forced to flee to Egypt. While Hisham Matar was studying architecture in London, his father was kidnapped from his home in Cairo and delivered to the Libyan secret service. The last the family heard of him was in 1995, and they have no idea whether he is still alive, held as a political prisoner, or dead. 

Hisham Matar's first novel, 'In the Country of Men', was published in 2006, and nominated for that year's Booker Prize. It is a moving account of the political world of male violence under a brutal dictatorship, mirrored in the domestic sphere where women are the chattels of men.

Hisham Matar has chosen a wide range of music for his Private Passions selection, in which various types of Arabic music are interwoven with works by Chopin (his 'Revolutionary' Study Op.10 No.12), Sibelius's Violin Concerto played by Jascha Heifetz, Ligeti ( a piano piece from 'Musica ricercata'), Schubert (the song 'Nacht und Traume), and Bob Dylan (I Shall be Released, sung by Jeff Buckley).

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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