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

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Book at Bedtime

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Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and world literature

Readings from modern classics, new works by leading writers and literature from around the world

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Book at Bedtime: The One Who Wrote Destiny

Bhasker Patel

Chetna Pandya

Maya Sondhi

Indira Varma

Taru Devani

Nikesh Shukla

Sara Davies

Mair Bosworth

Book at Bedtime: The One Who Wrote Destiny: Episode 6: Laila

The One Who Wrote Destiny

Episode 6

Episode 6: Laila

Laila

BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime, The One Who Wrote Destiny, Laila

London - present day. Laila takes a strange acting gig, where she meets Raks.

A hilarious and moving new novel from Nikesh Shukla about three generations of one family. Laila takes a strange acting gig, where she meets Raks.

Ba believes in destiny. Mukesh believes in coincidence. Neha believes in patterns and consistency. And Raks believes in the manifest destiny of his own male ego.

The One Who Wrote Destiny is the hilarious and moving new novel by Nikesh Shukla, Editor of The Good Immigrant anthology of essays and author of the novels Meatspace and Coconut Unlimited.

For Book at Bedtime, five voices tell the story of three generations of the same family, riven by feuds and falling-outs, united by fates and fortunes. Mukesh moves from Kenya to the drizzly northern town of Keighley in 1966. Decades later, his daughter Neha is dying from lung cancer, a genetic gift from her mother and an invocation to forge a better relationship with her brother and her widowed father before it's too late. Neha's brother Rakesh is a comedian but his career is flat-lining and he's grieving his mother and sister. Ba has never looked after her two young grandchildren before. After the death of her daughter, they come to stay with her and she has to work out how to bond with two children who are used England, not to the rhythms of Kenya...

Readers: Bhasker Patel, Chetna Pandya, Maya Sondhi, Indira Varma and Taru Devani
Producer: Mair Bosworth.

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

Hilarious and moving novel from Nikesh Shukla about three generations of one family.

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Episode 6: Laila

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