Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,16 Nov 2016,30 mins

Paulo Coelho, Your Name, Turner Contemporary, The art of writing non-fiction

Front Row

Available for over a year

Internationally-acclaimed writer Paulo Coelho discusses his new novel The Spy, based on the life of the dancer Mata Hari. Coelho is best-known for The Alchemist, an allegorical novel about a young shepherd boy, first published in 1988, which has now sold more than 65m copies worldwide. Your Name is the latest Japanese anime film to attract large global audiences, and is written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, regarded by many as the successor to Studio Ghibli's legendary Hayao Miyazaki. The film, about a teenage boy and girl who wake up and find themselves living in the other's body, is reviewed by Larushka Ivan-Zadeh. Last night the lawyer Philippe Sands won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. His book, East West Street, explores the origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide as concepts but it is also a detective story and a thriller. To discuss the art of writing non-fiction, Philippe Sands is joined by Cathy Rentzenbrink who wrote The Last Act of Love, a memoir about her late brother who was seriously injured by a dangerous driver. We explore what happens when a high-profile art gallery turns to the local community of artists and makers to commission a work. Kirsty Lang visits Margate and Turner Contemporary's Studio Group to meet Kashif Nadim Chaudry, the artist they chose to work with on his large-scale textile artwork The Three Graces. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Marilyn Rust.

Programme Website
More episodes