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
24 February 2008
Richard Dawkins joins Mariella Frostrup to reveal the part that fiction plays in his life, and chooses five of his favourite books.
Five of the Best: Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is one of the best-selling authors of non-fiction in the UK. Well known for popular science classics such as The Selfish Gene, his most recent book is last year's anti-religion polemic The God Delusion. He joins Mariella Frostrup to reveal the part that fiction plays in his life, and chooses five of his favourite books.
Richard Dawkins's Five of the Best:
The Black Cloud: Fred Hoyle Dark Universe: Daniel Galouye Red Strangers: Elspeth Huxley The Lion Children: Angus, Travers and Maisie MacNeice The Sword of Honour: Evelyn Waugh
José Saramago: a Reader's Guide
The Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His latest novel Death at Intervals is out this month. Mariella is joined by a Saramago fan, the translator Amanda Hopkinson, to discuss his work and pick out some of his most enjoyable books.
Death at Intervals: Jose Saramago (Harvill)
Clare Morrall
Five years ago Clare Morrall was surprisingly short listed for the Booker Prize for her book Astonishing Splashes of Colour, a debut novel published by a tiny independent publishing house. Now she talks to Mariella about her third novel, The Language of Others, explains how her work as a music teacher has found its way into the book, and reveals why she's so drawn to characters who can't quite understand the world they live in.
