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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: Kate Atkinson on Life After Life

17/03/2013

Kate Atkinson on Life After Life

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Kate Atkinson on Life After Life

Kate Atkinson on her new book Life After Life and classic and modern Western novels.

Kate Atkinson talks to Mariella Frostrup about her new book Life After Life, we discuss classic and modern Western novels and betting on literary prizes.

Kate Atkinson discuss her latest novel Life After Life with Mariella Frostrup, in which we follow her central character Ursula as she lives her life over and over again, each version altered by one, sometimes small event. During her myriad different lives and deaths Ursula experiences two world wars from both the British and German perspectives, the loss of friends and family as well as the many hardships experienced by that generation and discovers that trying to change the future isn't always as easy as you think.

For many people their first memories of Westerns are from films - John Wayne protecting his land and his gold in The Spoilers, roaming gunfighters in A Fistful of Dollars and Gary Cooper as The Marshall alone against killers bent on revenge in High Noon.
With the dramatization on Radio 4 of two classic Western novels, Hombre by Elmore Leonard and Shane by Jack Schaefer, Open Book explores the Wild West in books old and new with Michael Carlson and novelist Ace Atkins.

People may have the occasional flutter on the Grand National or the Cheltenham races, but what about the Man Booker, the Costa or the Women's Prize for Fiction? It seems many people are now betting on the outcome of our leading literary prizes, but as Graham Sharpe, Media Relations Director of William Hill, who sets their prices for these events explains, picking the winning author can be more difficult than a winning horse.

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