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 4,24 Jul 2022,28 mins

Tess Gunty on The Rabbit Hutch; Jackie Kay on the writing of Jamaica Kincaid

Open Book

Available for over a year

Johny Pitts talks to debut novelist Tess Gunty about her novel The Rabbit Hutch which has just been shortlisted for Waterstones Debut Fiction Award. The Rabbit Hutch is a polyphonic novel that revolves around 18-year-old Blandine and the residents of a low-cost apartment block in the Rust Belt of the US. The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, all of them looking for ways to live in a dying city. The poet and writer Jackie Kay talks to Johny about the writing of Jamaica Kincaid asher books are republished by Picador to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Among the freshly available titles are the writer's first novel, Annie John, and her travel memoir, Among Flowers. And the author of The Return of Faraz Ali, Aamina Ahmad, explores her mother’s secret life with books from Urdu poetry to feminist book clubs. Book List – Sunday 24 July and Thursday 28 July The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty NW by Zadie Smith The Tesseract by Alex Garland Ulysses by James Joyce Middlemarch by George Eliot Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid The Autobiography of my Mother by Jamaica Kincaid Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas by Jamaica Kincaid My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid The Return of Faraz Ali by Aamina Ahmad

Programme Website
More episodes