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Front Row: The Reader author Bernhard Schlink, Homeland returns, Caryl Churchill's new play

The Reader author Bernhard Schlink, Homeland returns, Caryl Churchill's new play

04/10/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, The Reader author Bernhard Schlink, Homeland returns, Caryl Churchill's new play

The Reader author Bernhard Schlink, US painter Alex Katz, and TV drama Homeland is back.

Mark Lawson talks to the author of The Reader, Bernhard Schlink, and to 85-year-old painter Alex Katz. Plus a review of the second series of the hit TV drama Homeland.

With Mark Lawson.

Homeland, the acclaimed US TV series starring Damian Lewis and Claire Danes, returns to our screens for a second series this weekend. Sarah Crompton reviews the drama which focuses on a CIA officer (Danes) who believes that US Marine and now Congressman Nicholas Brody (Lewis) was turned by Al-Qaeda when held captive in Iraq for eight years.

Bernhard Schlink is the author of the controversial novel The Reader, which relates the story of a young German's love affair with an older woman, who turns out to have had a Nazi past. Schlink explains why he never expected the controversy, and reveals why the theme of deception dominates his latest collection of stories, Summer Lies.

Alex Katz, now aged 85, is considered one of the most important living American artists. With exhibitions opening in Margate and London, he reflects on a career that spans six decades and why he never thought of himself as a Pop artist.

When playwright Caryl Churchill attended rehearsals of her new play Love and Information at the Royal Court Theatre, she brought along another new play, Ding Dong the Wicked, which now opens this week. It's a short play about a family whose son is about to go to war. Writer Bidisha reviews. 

Producer Stephen Hughes.

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