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| | | OPEN BOOK
Spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | | | | | Maev Kennedy was born in Dublin in 1954, the child of two writers who subsidised literary work with jobbing journalism. She worked for many years for the Irish Times, ultimately as parliamentary and political sketch writer. Maev wrote on arts and politics for a wide range of Irish and British publications, before joining the staff of the Guardian, where after a stint of editing the Guardian Diary, she is now Arts and Heritage Correspondent. She lives in London with her son Samuel.
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|  | | Detail from the cover of The Zigzag Way by Anita Desai.
Listen to Alexandra Fuller interview
Listen to Reading clinic
Take part in the programme. Find out how you can contact us to put your literary question to The Reading Clinic
This week's programme:
In this week's Open Book, Maev Kennedy talks to Alexandra Fuller about her chilling and hilarious new book, 'Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier'. Three times Booker prize nominated author Anita Desai reveals that she feels more at home in Mexico, the setting for her latest novel 'The Zigzag Way', than in her native India. But roaming aside, fishing and literature - how do you vocalise the idyll? We find out at a peaceful trout stream in Norfolk.
Reading Clinic: Chinese Classics
Julia Lovell, Research Fellow in modern Chinese literature at Queens' College, Cambridge, gives her recommendations for classical Chinese writing. See booklist below.
Programme book list:
1) Scribbling the Cat: Travels With An African Soldier - Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 033043327X
2) Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0330490192
3) The Zigzag Way - Anita Desai
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
ISBN: 0701177438
4) Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0099289636
5) Hooked!: Fishing Memories - George Melly
Publisher: Robson Books
ISBN: 1861052758
6) The Magic Wheel: Anthology of Fishing in Literature - ed. David Profumo and Graham Swift
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 033029072X
7) Somewhere Else - Charles Rangeley-Wilson
Publisher: Yellow Jersey Press
ISBN: 0224064304
8) Fish, Fishing and the Meaning of Life - ed. Jeremy Paxman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140237410
9) Monkey: Journey to the West - Wu Chung-en
Publisher: Shambala Publications
ISBN: 0877736529
10) Wild Swans - Yung Chang
Publisher: Perennial
ISBN: 0007176155
11) Story of the Stone - Cao Xuequin trans. David Hawkes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140442936
12) The True Story of Ah Q - Lu Xun
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Co
ISBN: 1419185950
Please note that the selection of Chinese books may not all be in print. However, they should be obtainable online, and through good libraries and second hand bookshops.
E-mail Open Book with your comments and views about the programme.
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