Open Book

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BBC Radio 4 LW

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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Open Book: Jonathan Franzen, Amitav Ghosh, Nina Mingya Powles

10/10/2021

Jonathan Franzen, Amitav Ghosh, Nina Mingya Powles

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Jonathan Franzen, Amitav Ghosh, Nina Mingya Powles

Jonathan Franzen talks to Elizabeth Day about his novel Crossroads.

Jonathan Franzen talks to Elizabeth Day about his novel Crossroads, set in the 1970s, it's the first part of a trilogy about the Hildebrandt family.

The American novelist Jonathan Franzen talks to Elizabeth Day about the first part of his trilogy of novels about the Hildebrandt family, Crossroads. 

Russ Hildebrandt, pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of an affair, his wife, Marion has her own secret life, their eldest child, Clem, is debating on whether to sign up to fight in Vietnam. While daughter Becky, long the social queen of her high school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, has an escalating drug problem. 

Jonathan Franzen talks candidly to Elizabeth about the novel, the process of writing, and if he's kinder on his characters than he was twenty years ago in The Corrections. 

Next month's climate change conference in Glasgow, COP26, is hoping to bring leaders together to agree on a better and more sustainable future. In recent years, we’ve seen a huge flourishing of eco-fiction, nature writing, poetry, and essays as a way for writers and readers to engage more imaginatively with our planet. Amitav Ghosh’s latest book The Nutmeg’s Curse - Parables for a Planet in Crisis, is a powerful combination of history, essay, and polemic. Nina Mingya Powles book, Small Bodies of Water, recently won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing, and they both join Elizabeth to talk about their recommendations for a green reading list.

Book List – Sunday 10 October and Thursday 14 October

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Purity by Jonathan Franzen 
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Nutmeg’s Curse - Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles

Nina Mingya Powles recommendations 
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 
The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler 
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Amitav Ghosh’s recommendations 
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward 
Barkskins by Annie Proulx 
Imaginary Maps by Mahasweta Devi

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