Sunday 16:00-16:30, repeated Thursday 16:00-16:30, except first Sunday in the month when it is replaced by Book Club.
Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.
This week
Sunday 16 December 2007
Mariella Frostrup talks to novelist Benjamin Markovits about this latest novel, A Quiet Adjustment which is the second part of a fictional trilogy about the poet Byron.
Benjamin Markovits
Mariella Frostrup meets the novelist Benjamin Markovits, whose latest book A Quiet Adjustment is the second part of a fictional trilogy about the poet Byron. He explains the difficulties of writing in the style of Jane Austen, and tells Mariella why a former professional basketball player who grew up in Texas should be so obsessed with nineteenth-century England.
A Quiet Adjustment: Benjamin Markovits Publisher: Faber and Faber
Imposture (Byron Trilogy): Benjamin Markovits Publisher: Faber and Faber
Either Side of Winter: Benjamin Markovits Publisher: Faber and Faber
The Syme Papers: Benjamin Markovits Publisher: Faber and Faber
Christmas Non-fiction Picks
The journalist and writer Simon Jenkins and Suzi Feay, Literary Editor of the Independent on Sunday, join Mariella to recommend some of the year’s best non-fiction titles, suitable as Christmas presents or holiday reading.
Suzi Feay's choices
The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle: Jessie Sheeler Publisher: Francis Lincoln Publishers
Being Shelley: The Poet’s Search for Himself by Anne Wroe Publisher: Jonathan Cape
The Wild Places by Robert McFarlane Publishers: Granta Books
Simon Jenkins's choices:
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Rajiv Chandrasekaran Publisher: Bloomsbury
God’s Architect: Pugin and the building of Romantic Britain: Rosemary Hill Publisher: Allen Lane
The Meaning of Life: Terry Eagleton Publisher: Oxford University Press
Estates: An Intimate History: Lynsey Hanley Publisher: Granta Books
Eileen Chang
The novelist Xiaolu Guo, nominated for this year's Orange prize, joins Mariella to discuss the work of Eileen Chang. One of China's greatest twentieth-century writers, Chang is barely known in the West. But a new film version of her novella Lust, Caution could change all that. As two volumes of her work are published in English for the first time, Xiaolu and Mariella talk about her work and tragic life.
