Benjamin Markovits, The Work of Eileen Chang, and Christmas Non-fiction Picks

Available for over a year

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. 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. 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.