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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

Mariella Frostrup

Richard Flanagan

Peter Straus

Jeremy Dyson

Open Book: Richard Flanagan

13/07/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan on the long tail of evil and why he had to write about the Death Railway.

Richard Flanagan on why he had to write about the Thai-Burmese Death Railway, a celebration of the cult author Robert Aickman, a tip from Peter Straus and all about Self-Help.

This week Mariella speaks to the award-winning Australian writer Richard Flanagan about his latest novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, an epic tale with a dark heart inspired by his father's experience of surviving the Death Railway during WW2.

Also in the programme, agent Peter Straus explains why you should read Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens; Jeremy Dyson and friends celebrate cult author, Robert Aickman; and as an avalanche of self-help manuals hit bookshops, a look at what lies behind this phenomenon.

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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