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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

Rabih Alameddine

David Duchovny

John Freeman

Open Book: Rabih Alameddine on his new novel An Unnecessary Woman

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22/02/2015

Rabih Alameddine on his new novel An Unnecessary Woman

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Rabih Alameddine on his new novel An Unnecessary Woman

Rabih Alameddine talks to Mariella Frostrup about his novel An Unnecessary Woman.

Rabih Alameddine talks to Mariella Frostrup about his novel An Unnecessary Woman, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Rabih Alameddine's new novel An Unnecessary Woman was shortlisted for a National Book Award. One reviewer called it 'succulent fiction'. He talks to Mariella about his cantankerous heroine, her obsession with translation and why we all turn into our mothers.

Actor David Duchovny, perhaps best known as Fox Mulder in The X-Files, has written his first novel: Holy Cow. As well as discussing how he created his bovine narrator, he also reveals that a volume of William Blake's poetry is the Book He'd Never Lend.

And in our Reading Clinic critic and writer John Freeman suggests books for a listener who is off to Las Vegas to celebrate his birthday - a city, Freeman says, of 'second chances', so does its literature reflect that?

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Rabih Alameddine on his new novel An Unnecessary Woman

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