Open Book

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BBC Radio 4 FM

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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

Open Book: Revisiting the 1990s

Revisiting the 1990s

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Revisiting the 1990s

Chris Power explores fiction set in the 1990s.

Chris Power explores the 1990s through two new novels, Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen and Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill.

Remember the 1990s? A decade in which literary authors briefly rivalled rock stars - Martin Amis netting a half million pound advance for The Information - political scientists proclaimed the end of history, and we first heard about a technological curiosity called the World Wide Web. 
In this week's programme, Chris Power is joined by two writers whose books are set during this moment of change in 1994. James Cahill’s debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, explores the cultural revolution in the British art scene, and sexual adventures on the streets of Soho.  Author of Big Girl, Small Town, Michelle Gallen, pitches us into a group of teenage friends growing up in a Northern Ireland caught between sectarian violence and the emerging promise of the Peace Process in her new novel, Factory Girls. And Alexandra Pringle,  Executive Publisher at Bloomsbury, talks us through how publishing changed and the popular books everyone was reading during the decade.

Book List – Sunday 26 June and Thursday 30 June

Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill 
Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen 
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen 
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace 
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Reef by Romesh Gunesekera
Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
The Secret History by Donna Tartt 
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding 
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason 
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker 
The Beach by Alex Garland
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby 
Are You Experienced? by William Sutcliffe 
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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