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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Led by James Naughtie, readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

Led by James Naughtie, a group of readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best-known novels

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Bookclub: Allan Massie - A Question of Loyalties

Allan Massie - A Question of Loyalties

07/09/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Bookclub, Allan Massie - A Question of Loyalties

Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties with James Naughtie and readers.

James Naughtie presents from the Edinburgh Festivals, where Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties, about the divisions in France during World War II.

With James Naughtie. Recorded at the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals, Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties. First published in 1989, the book is widely acclaimed as his finest.

The novel engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty and nationality as it follows a family through the divisions in France during World War II, and the repercussions which last for decades. 

In the early 1950s Etienne de Balafré strives to find out what happened to his father when the German invasion of 1940 divided the country between collaboration and resistance. Where some might see an accomplice, the author Allan Massie seeks to understand a human being making difficult choices.

As always on Bookclub, a group of especially invited readers join in the discussion.

October's Bookclub choice : Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed Guest : Allan Massie
Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

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