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: Margaret Atwood, Sam Selvon

12/03/2023

Margaret Atwood, Sam Selvon

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Margaret Atwood, Sam Selvon

Johny Pitts explores the work of two writers who have combined comedy with tragedy.

Johny Pitts talks to Margaret Atwood about returning to short fiction after the death of her husband, plus Susheila Nasta and Anthony Joseph discuss The Lonely Londoners' author.

Twice winner of the Booker Prize, Margaret Atwood is best known as the visionary behind The Handmaid's Tale, a dystopia which like all the great has entered a wider social discourse. Johny Pitts talks to the giant of contemporary literature about returning to short fiction following the death of her husband Graeme, attempting to imagine the future and what she would say to George Orwell.

Plus,100 years after the birth of Trinidadian author Sam Selvon's birth, what is the enduring legacy of the Trinidadian author behind The Lonely Londoners? Answering this question is the TS Eliot Prize winning poet, musician and Lecturer at Kings College London, Anthony Joseph along with Founding Editor of Wasafiri magazine, Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary University London and Selvon's literary executer, Susheila Nasta.

Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

Book List 
Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood 
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 
Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood 
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
A Brighter Sun by Sam Selvon
Ways of Sunlight by Sam Selvon
Turn Again Tiger by Sam Selvon 
The Housing Lark by Sam Selvon
An Island is a World by Sam Selvon 
I Hear Thunder by Sam Selvon 
Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph

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