Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Bookclub

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

BBC Radio 4 LW

James Naughtie

Ann Patchett

Dymphna Flynn

Bookclub: Ann Patchett - Bel Canto

Ann Patchett - Bel Canto

06/08/2017

BBC Radio 4 - Bookclub, Ann Patchett - Bel Canto

Ann Patchett talks to James Naughtie about her Orange Prize-winning novel Bel Canto.

American writer Ann Patchett talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about her Orange Prize-winning novel Bel Canto.

Ann Patchett discusses her novel Bel Canto, which was awarded both the Orange Prize for Fiction and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. 

Bel Canto is set in an unspecified Latin American country, where insurgents have stormed the vice-president's mansion during a diplomatic party, believing that they will capture the President himself. Unfortunately for the guerrillas, he has stayed home to watch his favourite soap opera, and they are left with a miscellaneous collection of hostages from various nations.

Celebrated soprano Roxane Coss is among those taken hostage and she strikes up a friendship with the opera-mad president of a Japanese electronics company who has long worshipped her from afar.

The novel is based on events in Peru in 1996 when a guerrilla group entered the Japanese ambassador's residence and seized nearly 600 hostages and demanded the release of a number of political prisoners. The resulting siege lasted four months.

In Bookclub Ann Patchett discusses the unlikely comedy in Bel Canto and how she wrote it just before 9/11, which she describes as a lifetime ago. 

Presented by James Naughtie and including a group of invited readers.

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Ann Patchett
Producer : Dymphna Flynn

September's Bookclub choice : The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe (1992).

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Bookclub

Ann Patchett - Bel Canto

Contributors

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4