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
20 January 2008
Bestselling children's author Eoin Colfer on a new hero.
Eoin Colfer Mariella talks to the children's novelist Eoin Colfer, author of the bestselling Artemis Fowl series. His new book, Airman, set in an alternative history on a fictional island kingdom off the coast of Ireland, tells the story of a boy who learns to fly. Eoin tells Mariella about his interest in early science fiction, and reveals how he uses his books to to settle childhood scores with his brothers.
Airman, by Eoin Colfer, is published by Puffin
Novels in translation
This week, more than 500 literary figures put their signatures to a letter protesting about Arts Council England's decision to cut funding to two small publishers specialising in foreign literature in translation. Mariella is joined by Tom Tivnan of The Bookseller to find out why publishing translated fiction is such an expensive business, and discuss whether public funding is the way forward.
The Reading Clinic
he journalist and author Jonathan Fenby offers some recommendations of novels and non-fiction to a teenage reader interested in books about China. Jonathan's recommendations:
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: Dai Sijie
Publisher: Vintage
Rickshaw: Lao She
Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
Dream of the Red Chamber: Cao Xuequin
Publisher: Dodo Press
The Long March: Sun Shuzun
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Grand Canal, Great River: Philip Watson
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers
The Forbidden City: Geremie Barme
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Public School Novels
Open Book looks at the history of the public school novel, from the birth of the genre in the 1850s to the present day, talking to Peter Kemp and Gregory Norminton, whose new book, Serious Things, is a dark thriller set in a fictional boys' boarding school.
Ship of Fools: Gregory Norminton
Publisher: Sceptre
Arts and Wonders: Gregory Norminton
Publisher: Sceptre
