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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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Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and world literature

Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book at Bedtime: Dissident Gardens

Laurel Lefkow

Allegra McIlroy

Elizabeth Reeder

Jonathan Lethem

Book at Bedtime: Dissident Gardens: Episode 1

Dissident Gardens

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, Dissident Gardens, Episode 1

By Jonathan Lethem. A powerful story of modern America spanning 80 years.

By Jonathan Lethem. A fragmented and compelling story of modern America from the perspective of those who lost out. At its heart is the fierce, campaigning radical Rose Zimmer.

By Jonathan Lethem

A Twentieth Century American epic by Jonathan Lethem, applying his sharp, funny and perfectly crafted prose to an alternative history of America which puts a woman at its heart - a Jewish, Communist woman, a single mother, a second generation immigrant deeply involved in the civil rights movement.

In 1955 Rose Zimmer is kicked out of the American Communist party for her affair with a black policeman. Her rage and her radicalism, her incendiary disappointment in the Twentieth Century, prove inescapable for the generations that come after her - her idealistic hippy daughter Miriam, black stepson Cicero and her lost grandson Sergius.

Jonathan Lethem is perhaps best known for 'Motherless Brooklyn', his noir-ish novel about a private detective with Tourettes which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the New York Times bestselling novel 'Fortress of Solitude' (named after Superman's ice cave hideaway) engaging with race, culture, comic books and cool music in the latter decades of the Twentieth Century. His novels tease the boundaries of genre and literary fiction.


Read by Laurel Lefkow
Abridged by Elizabeth Reeder

Produced by Allegra McIlroy.

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

By Jonathan Lethem. A compelling story of modern America spanning 80 years

By Jonathan Lethem. A fragmented and compelling story of modern America from the perspective of those who lost out. At its heart is the fierce, campaigning radical Rose Zimmer

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