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Interviews with well-known authors from Britain and around the world

Interviews with well-known authors from Britain and around the world, looking at what drives their work and concentrating on their literary life story.

Talking Books: Tracy Chevalier

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Tracy Chevalier

20/05/2013

BBC World Service - Talking Books, Tracy Chevalier

Historical novelist Tracy Chevalier on why she wants to bring the past to life

Historical novelist Tracy Chevalier on why she wants to bring the past to life.

In this third of four interviews with authors from around the globe, Talking Books meets American-born author Tracy Chevalier, whose second novel Girl with a Pearl Earring has sold more than three million copies worldwide and has been made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlet Johansson. Her historical novels are highly researched and range in subject matter from the discovery of fossils to Quakers helping slaves escape in pre-civil war Ohio. She talks to Gavin Esler about her love of research, why her latest book was the first to be set in her homeland America, and how she doesn’t write about what she knows. Why does she want to bring the past to life?

(Image: American-born author Tracy Chevalier)

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