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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

Ali Smith

Stella Duffy

Kamila Shamsie

Nicola Holloway

Open Book: Ali Smith on How to Be Both

Ali Smith on How to Be Both

14/09/2014

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Ali Smith on How to Be Both

Booker-shortlisted novelist Ali Smith and the art of the short story.

Mariella Frostrup talks to Ali Smith, who has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for the third time for How to Be Both. Plus Stella Duffy, Kamila Shamsie and an insider tip.

Ali Smith has been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize for the third time this year for her novel How To Be Both. It's a book of two halves - set in the present day and the fifteenth century - united by themes of art, love and loss. 

Stella Duffy has just published an anthology of her short stories. She talks about looking back over twenty years of writing life and reveals what a short story can do that the novel can't.

Novelist Kamila Shamsie on the book she'd never lend, her childhood copy of a much loved children's classic and a publisher gives us an insider's tip about an exciting new title.

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