Open Book

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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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Open Book: Viet Thanh Nguyen; Lanark at 40; Costume and Power

14/03/2021

Viet Thanh Nguyen; Lanark at 40; Costume and Power

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Viet Thanh Nguyen; Lanark at 40; Costume and Power

Elizabeth Day talks to Pulitzer Prize winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen about The Committed

Elizabeth Day talks to Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novel The Committed, a spy thriller that takes on themes of colonialism and ideology in 1980s Paris.

Elizabeth Day talks to Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novel The Committed. The story continues the journey of his unnamed protagonist from his 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathiser. A Vietnamese refugee and double agent, he arrives in Paris to be immediately swept up in a gangland world of drugs, violence, and street warfare. Both a thriller and a novel of ideas, it addresses the role of colonial powers, ideology, and generational upheaval. 

Writers Andrew O'Hagan and Kirstin Innes discuss Alasdair Gray's Lanark. First published forty years ago, it was heralded as a modernist masterpiece and significantly changed the course of modern Scottish writing. This year was the inaugural "Gray Day", an annual celebration of his work, and to mark it we hear why Lanark still has much to offer readers today. And novelist Lucy Jago explores the ways in which in historical fiction women have used clothes to project the power that the public sphere often denied them.

Book List – Sunday 14 March and Thursday 18 March

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan
Scabby Queen by Kirsten Innes 
A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago  
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Pamela by Samuel Richardson 
Orlando by Virginia Woolf 
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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