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 9 December 2007
Mariellla Frostrup talks to novelist Christopher Koch about his latest book, The Memory Room.
Christopher Koch
The Australian novelist is best known in this country for The Year of Living Dangerously, which was made into a major Hollywood film. His latest novel is set in the Cold War, and is a spy drama following the lives of childhood friends who are obsessed with secrecy.
Christopher Koch tells Mariella Frostrup how a mysterious friend provoked his interest in the subject, and why the island of Tasmania holds such fascination for writers.
The Memory Room- Christopher Koch
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Highways to War - Christopher Koch
Publisher: Vintage
The Year of Living Dangerously- Christopher Koch
Publisher: Vintage
Out Of Ireland- Christopher Koch
Publisher: Random House
Christmas Fiction Picks
Mariella is joined by the novelists Kate Mosse and Toby Litt to recommend some of the year's best fiction, from crime to verse novels, suitable as Christmas presents or just holiday reading.
Kate Mosse's choices:
Half of a Yellow Sun- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Harper Perennial
The Night Watch- Sarah Waters
Publisher: Virago
Ian Rankin: Exit Music
Publisher: Orion
Lean Mean Thirteen- Janet Evanovich
Publisher: Headline Review
Book of Fairytales- Angela Carter
Publisher: Virago
Toby Litt's choices:
Falling Man- Don Delillo
Publisher: Picador
Day- A.L. Kennedy
Publisher: Vintage
Donjong Heights- Ben Borek
Publisher: Egg Box Publishing
Classics for Children
As a new series of simplified Dickens novels is published, Open Book investigates the history of retelling great literature for children.
The writer Gill Tavner and illustrator Marcia Williams talk about their different approaches to adapting Dickens, and Kim Reynolds, Professor of Children's Literature at Newcastle University, talks about the seventeenth-century origins of the practice.
Six Dickens novels (Bleak House, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Oliver Twist), retold by Gill Tavner, are published by Real Reads.
Charles Dickens and Friends- Marcia Williams
Publisher: Walker Books
