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Front Row: Marlon James, Mercury Prize shortlist, Decolonising museum collections

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26/07/2018

Marlon James, Mercury Prize shortlist, Decolonising museum collections

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Marlon James, Mercury Prize shortlist, Decolonising museum collections

Marlon James champions cult novel Oreo and we assess this year's Mercury Prize shortlist.

Arts news, interviews and reviews. Marlon James champions Fran Ross's Oreo - a novel written at the height of the black power movement. Laura Snapes analyses the Mercury shortlist.

Fran Ross was a gifted African-American author who died in 1985. Her novel Oreo, written at the height of the Black Power movement, tells the rollercoaster story of a black-Jewish girl's quest for her white father using Greek myth, slang, Yiddish, puns, made-up words and Ross' own extraordinary imagination. The novel sank without much trace but Man Booker-Prizewinning author Marlon James, who's written the introduction to a new edition, claims its time is now. 

As the Mercury Prize shortlist is revealed, music journalist Laura Snapes discusses what surprised and delighted her, and what disappointed.

Museums and galleries are under increasing pressure to rethink their displays and collections acquired under colonial rule. What does change look like for these institutions and how will it affect the visitor experience? University College London curator Subhadra Das, anthropologist Dr Charlotte Joy and art historian and independent tour guide Alice Procter discuss what exactly decolonising a museum means and what the process entails.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed 
Producer: Rebecca Armstrong

Main image: Marlon James. Credit: Jeffrey Skemp.

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