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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

Judy Blume

Michael Hofmann

Rachel Seiffert

Gavin Kovite

Christopher Robinson

Open Book: Judy Blume

19/07/2015

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Judy Blume

Judy Blume talks to Mariella Frostrup about her new novel, In the Unlikely Event.

Presented by Mariella Frostrup. Judy Blume, one of America's best known and best loved novelists, talks about her new book for adults, In the Unlikely Event.

Mariella is joined by the American writer Judy Blume who is best known for her groundbreaking teen fiction including Forever and Are You There God? It's Me Margaret. She discusses her new adult novel In The Unlikely Event. It's set against the extraordinary events of 1952 when three planes crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey over the space of 58 days.

We discuss two books which explore opposite ends of German society just before Hitler came to power. Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner is set amongst a band of teenage boys in the underbelly of Berlin. While Reunion by Fred Uhlman is a beautifully rendered tale of a friendship which is destined not to survive. Mariella talks to Blood Brothers' translator Michael Hofmann and Rachel Seiffert, who has written the afterword to Reunion.

And the joys of writing a novel with a friend. Gavin Kovite, a former soldier turned army lawyer and writer, and Christopher Robinson, a poet and writer, reveal how they joined forces to create War of the Encyclopaedists, a novel about a friendship conducted partly online.

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