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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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Mariella Frostrup

Tobias Hill

George Prochnik

Tibor Fischer

Olivia Laing

Andrea Kidd

Open Book: Tobias Hill, Readers' Guide to Stefan Zweig, literary prizes

09/03/2014

Tobias Hill, Readers' Guide to Stefan Zweig, literary prizes

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Tobias Hill, Readers' Guide to Stefan Zweig, literary prizes

Tobias Hill talks to Mariella Frostrup about his latest novel What Was Promised.

Tobias Hill talks to Mariella Frostrup about his novel What Was Promised, and a look at the works of Stefan Zweig, who inspired Wes Anderson's new film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The film maker Wes Anderson has said that his latest movie The Grand Budapest Hotel was inspired by the life and works of the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig. Biographer George Prochnik and writer Tibor Fischer explore this once hugely popular early 20th century author, who was the most widely translated writer of his time.

Tobias Hill talks to Mariella Frostrup about his latest novel What was Promised, which begins in a bombed out East End in the grip of rationing in 1948. It's a visceral account of the lives of a community of locals and recent immigrants in a Columbia Road tenement as they emerge from the bomb dust and abandoned wastelands to try and pursue a better future.

This year sees the inauguration of two new major literary prizes - The Folio Prize and The Etisalat Prize for Literature. This is also the first year for the renamed Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, and we've also seen the revamping of The Wellcome Book Prize, Fiction Uncovered and the Man Booker. Writer and critic Olivia Laing discusses the prizes and the impact they could have for readers

There has been much talk this month about the plight and pleasure of independent bookshops, as they fall below the one thousand mark in the UK. Thankfully one place they continue to thrive is in the pages of books themselves, the latest being 'The Collected Works of AJ Fikry', which is set in a ramshackle independent bookshop on an island. It's Radio 4's Book at Bedtime so Open Book have a clip to whet your appetite.

Producer: Andrea Kidd.

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