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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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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: AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven

21/10/2012

AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven

AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven, and life behind the embassy door.

AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven, life behind the embassy door, and Kim Scott on the Aboriginal story in literature.

A. M. Homes discusses her poignant and funny new book May We Be Forgiven. Academic and Nixon obsessive Harold is our companion in this whirlwind of a novel when his dull life is ruptured by his super successful brother George, who having caused a terrible road accident, commits an even more heinous crime within his own home.

After James Bond has got the baddies and usually the girl, who is left to clear up the foreign relations devastation? 
The answer of course is the Diplomatic Service. It's a career that's been lampooned brilliantly by the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene but Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles and Brigid Keenan, who have both written memoirs about diplomatic life, discuss the real story behind the embassy door.

A British presence was established is what is now Western Australia in the 1820s, home to the indigenous Noongar people. It was a colonisation that led to violence and disease, and fights for land reclamation that continue to this day. The award winning author Kim Scott, who has a foot in both camps with a white mother and a Noongar father, talks about how his latest novel That Deadman Dance uses this first contact to explore the fractious relationship between white and indigenous peoples and its oppressive and emotional impact. 

Producer: Andrea Kidd.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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AM Homes on her new novel May We Be Forgiven

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