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: Here Again Now, Readers guide to Gogol, Lessons in Chemistry

27/03/2022

Here Again Now, Readers guide to Gogol, Lessons in Chemistry

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Here Again Now, Readers guide to Gogol, Lessons in Chemistry

Elizabeth Day talks to Okechukwu Nzelu about his novel Here Again Now.

Elizabeth Day talks to Okechukwu Nzelu about his novel Here Again Now, and explores the work of Nikolai Gogol.

Elizabeth Day talks to the author of The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney,  Okechukwu Nzelu about his second novel Here Again Now. 

A tender portrait of lovers, fathers, and sons which explores the power of family, both the one into which we are born and those we choose for ourselves. Achike, an up-and-coming actor, has a lifelong friendship with Ekene, which always seems on the brink of becoming more intimate. When Achike’s alcoholic father moves in, the three men are forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about each other and find a way forward into their new lives. 

Elizabeth explores the writing of Nikolai Gogol.  Born in Ukraine, the author of Dead Souls, The Overcoat and The Nose, embodies both the ties that bind the Russia and Ukraine together and the differences that set them apart. Dr Oliver Ready, translator and research fellow in Russian Literature at St Anthony's College Oxford, currently writing about Nikolai Gogol and Viktoriia Grivina, from Kharkiv, currently a cultural researcher in Modern Languages at St Andrews University, join Elizabeth to discuss Gogol's life and writing. 

And we hear about a new book for April. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus features a pioneering female chemist who chafes against the sexism of 1950s America.

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