Programme Details

The World Health Organisation wants to eliminate Leprosy around the world by the end of this year. With still around half a million sufferers - in poor countries like Madagascar, Brazil and Nepal - Leprosy is a disease that has haunted and terrified the popular imagination of cultures worldwide. Wrongly seen as a tropical disease, it remains shrouded in myth and misunderstanding; we still do not even know how it is carried. Lepers have always been seen as outcasts and as dangerous, leading to the establishment of leper colonies on islands and remote locations around the world. Writers have struggled to convey the horror of the condition and Leprosy has often become a metaphor to describe humankind's disquiet with a fragile universe. In tonight's Night Waves, Paul Allen explores the history and cultural roots of Leprosy and describes its appearance in literature, from the bible to Graham Greene.

Eugene McCabe was born in Glasgow but has spent most of his life on his farm in the Irish countryside near the Monaghan and Fermanagh border. In short stories and novels like Death and Nightingales, he has brilliantly evoked the characters, emotions, religious beliefs, and the spirit of this remote backwater. Heaven Lies About Us is the title of his collected short stories published together for the first time this week. He talks to Paul Allen about his writing on tonight's Night Waves.

Also on the programme, the latest film by the veteran Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, the man responsible for the award wining Eternity and a Day. His latest film, the first of a trilogy of epic historical proportions, is called The Weeping Meadow. In this modern day Greek tragedy, Angelopoulos tracks a doomed love affair between 1919 and 1949 and from Odessa to Thessaloniki. The recent history of modern Greece is the film's troubled backdrop. Tim Robey reviews the film on tonight's Night Waves.

Night Waves, with Paul Allen, live this Friday night at the slightly later time of 9.45pm on BBC Radio 3.