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 April 2008
This week on Open Book: Will Self on a dark satire, and why he's thrown away his computer; Philip Hensher on the work of VS Naipaul; and a rediscovered novel by Dumas.
Will Self
Mariella talks to the novelist Will Self. His latest book, The Butt, is a dark satire set in an unnamed country ravaged by war and resembling a nightmare version of Australia. He explains this bleak vision, reveals why he's thrown away his laptop, and tells Mariella about the tontine, the only financial product which causes its investors to kill each other. The Butt is out now in hardback, published by Bloomsbury .
Dumas's Lost Masterpiece Next month sees the publication of a previously unknown novel by Alexandre Dumas, the writer best known for The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Mariella is joined by the book's UK editor, Robin Harvie, who explains how it was discovered in a French archive, and how it fits in with the rest of his swashbuckling output. The Last Cavalier is out next month in hardback published by Fourth Estate, and in paperback published by HarperPerennial.
Hensher on Naipaul This week's longlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction includes Patrick French's The World Is What It Is, a revealing biography of the novelist and Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul. Mariella talks to one of Naipaul's most passionate fans, the novelist Philip Hensher, who picks some of his favourite works and explains why he admires them so much. The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of VS Naipaul is out now in hardback, published by Picador.
