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Open Book

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

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Open Book: Victoria Hislop talks about her new novel The Thread

30/10/2011

Victoria Hislop talks about her new novel The Thread

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Victoria Hislop talks about her new novel The Thread

Victoria Hislop on her novel The Thread and crime writing Roslund and Hellstrom style.

Victoria Hislop discusses her latest romantic novel The Thread; crime-writing Roslund and Hellstrom style; and debunking the stereotypes of young South Asian writing.

Victoria Hislop discusses her latest novel The Thread, a romantic saga intertwined with the fascinating changing fortunes of Thessaloniki over four decades of blood soaked Greek history. The author of the hugely successful The Island and The Return, she also explains why, despite having already published these two bestsellers, she still doesn't like to refer to herself as a novelist. 

"What happens when writers are given the freedom to be writers - regardless of colour or religion; to write about what they want, how they want?" This question was Kavita Bhanot's starting point for her anthology Too Asian, Not Asian Enough, in which she argues that we see the same stories about generation gap and culture clash over and over again in British Asian writing. Kavita is joined by the Pakistani novelist H.M Naqvi to discuss the issues surrounding young South Asian writers today. 

Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom are the latest in a long line of successful Swedish crime writers. Writing together under the name Roslund and Hellstrom, their series is based around a melancholic work-obsessed detective superintendent, who sleeps in his office and obsessively listens to the music of the 1960s Swedish singer Siw Malmkvist. Coming from different backgrounds, they tackle controversial contemporary issues but won't ever talk about how they collaborate together. 


Producer: Andrea Kidd.

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Victoria Hislop talks about her new novel The Thread

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