Programme Details

The Indian critic Pankaj Mishra discovered the writer Arundhati Roy - then created his own masterpiece, his first novel The Romantics about East meets West. Now he puts his pen to the story of Buddha - and uncovers, amongst many things, a surprising link between Buddhism and Nietzsche. He talks to Mary Allen about An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World and comes up with a surprising confession.

The film White Chicks released this week stars the two TV stars the Wayans brothers. They play black FBI agents who dress up as white rich women in order to divert would-be kidnappers. But has race lost its place as being a force for comedy? Or does this film show an inverted racism? Anthropologist Kit Davis and film critic Tim Robey discuss race as a source of comedy.

The literary critic Susan Sontag said -

"Literary translation [...] is pre-eminently an ethical task, and one which mirrors and duplicates the role of literature itself, to educate the heart and mind; to secure and deepen the awareness (with all its consequences) that other people, people different from us, really do exist."

In the week English Pen announces its new writers in translation programme, Mary Allen discusses the politics of translation with Amanda Hopskinson, translator, writer and Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Director of Pen Susie Nicklin. How have English Pen chosen what books to support? And what do these choices mean in our culture as well as the one they are from?

And crossing yet more boundaries, Mary Allen talks to the dance world's hottest property - the award winning Flemish-Moroccan choreographer and dancer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, on the eve of the opening of his latest show, Tempus Fugit.


That's all on Night Waves with Mary Allen here on BBC Radio 3 at 9.30pm



Presenter: Mary Allen
Producer: Ariane Koek


Additional information:

1) An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World by Pankaj Mishra published by Picador

2) Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya is published by Harvill Press and translated from the Russian by Arch Tait. The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic is published by Saqi and translated from the Croatian by Michael Heim.

3) Tempus Fugit by C de La B is on at the Queen Elizabeth Hall London Friday October 15th and Saturday 16th October.

4) White Chicks Certificate 12 is on nationwide release from Friday October 15th