Open Book

Original version

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

BBC Radio 4 FM

Open Book: Karen Joy Fowler on the infamous Booth family,  Michel the Giant, Lisa Taddeo on Fever Dream

20/03/2022

Karen Joy Fowler on the infamous Booth family,  Michel the Giant, Lisa Taddeo on Fever Dream

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Karen Joy Fowler on the infamous Booth family,  Michel the Giant, Lisa Taddeo on Fever Dream

Johny Pitts talks to Karen Joy Fowler about the infamous Booth family

Johny Pitts talks to Karen Joy Fowler about the infamous Booth family and to writer Tete-Michel Kpomassie about the reissue of Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland.

Johny Pitts talks to Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Bookclub and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, about her new novel Booth. It tells the story of the brilliant and ill-fated thespian Booth family. Junius is the patriarch, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, and a man of terrifying instability, his children grow up in a remote farmstead in 1820s rural Baltimore, while the country draws ever closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. Of the six Booth siblings who survive to adulthood, one is John Wilkes Booth who makes the terrible decision that will change the course of history - the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  

Johny travels to Paris to meet Tété-Michel Kpomassie. He grew up in 1950s Togo, West Africa, but when he discovered a book on Greenland as a teen, this distant land became an instant obsession and he embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. His newly reissued book of that trip, Michel the Giant, is a glorious, colourful memoir of his young life. Now at 81 years old, he tells Johny about his plans to return to the country of his dreams. 

And the author of Three Women and Animal, Lisa Taddeo, shares the Book I'd Never Lend. Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell, is a chilling tale of maternal anxiety and ecological menace.

Book List – Sunday 20 March and Thursday 24 March

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler 
Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Animal by Lisa Taddeo
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin: Translated by Megan McDowell

BBC Radio 4

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

Open Book

Karen Joy Fowler on the infamous Booth family, Michel the Giant, Lisa Taddeo on Fever Dream

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4