A special programme from the largest public literature house in Europe, Litteraturhuset in Oslo. Harriett Gilbert is joined by one of Scandinavia’s most successful crime writers, Anne Holt. Her novel 1,222 is a tense, twisty story set during a snowstorm in an isolated mountain hotel, a reference to the fact that the hotel is one thousand, two hundred and twenty-two metres above sea level. It features her series detective Hanne Wilhelmsen, no longer in the police force due to being paralysed by a...
Jan 01, 2025•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart talks about his Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain. The powerful, heartbreaking story of a young boy's love for his addict mother, and a mother's chaotic love for her son. Photo credit: Martyn Pickersgill
Dec 05, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ahead of its 20th anniversary early next year, the author Kate Mosse talks to Harriett Gilbert and readers from around the world, about her globally bestselling novel, Labyrinth. It’s a historical thriller set between medieval and contemporary France where the lives of two women, living centuries apart, are linked in a common destiny. In 13th century Carcassonne, seventeen-year-old Alaïs is given a mysterious book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the Grail. While 700 years la...
Nov 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this month’s edition of BBC World Book Club bestselling American writer Elif Batuman discusses her acclaimed debut novel. ‘The Idiot’ follows Selin, a Turkish-American fresher at Harvard in the mid-1990s, delving into her experiences as she navigates the challenges of university life, grappling with identity, language, and the complexities of relationships, romantic and otherwise. Selin becomes infatuated with Ivan, an older Hungarian mathematics student, and their relationship unfolds primar...
Oct 01, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast German author Ewald Arenz answers readers' questions about his bestselling novel Tasting Sunlight. It’s the moving story of Liss, a reclusive woman who single-handedly runs her family farm, and teenage runaway Sally who takes refuge there. As they work together, Liss and Sally form an unlikely – and nurturing – friendship. Image: Ewald Arenz (Credit: Tristar Media/Getty Images)
Sep 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In one of the last broadcast interviews, the acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien, who died aged 93 in July 2024, is in conversation with Kim Chakanetsa. In this bonus episode, shediscusses her final novel, Girl – which tells the story of a young girl in Nigeria who is captured by the Islamist group Boko Haram – the effects of lockdown and her love of writing and literature from around the world… (Recorded in 2020)
Aug 04, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Another chance to hear Harriett Gilbert talking to bestselling American writer Paul Auster, who died earlier this year on 30 April 2024. Paul Auster joined Harriett in 2012, with a literary festival audience and readers from around the world, to discuss his acclaimed work The New York Trilogy. In three brilliant variations on the classic detective story, Auster makes the well-traversed terrain of New York City his own. Each interconnected tale exploits the elements of standard detective fiction ...
Aug 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Following the death of the Irish author Edna O’Brien in July 2024, another chance to hear a 2008 World Book Club episode in which she talked to Harriett Gilbert and an audience of readers about her renowned debut novel The Country Girls. Banned in her homeland on publication, it has become one of O’Brien’s most admired and renowned works. Producer: Oliver Jones Image: Edna O'Brien, pictured in 2009 at the Hay Festival (Credit: David Levenson/Getty Images)
Jul 31, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Toronto is a bustling city on Lake Ontario which is growing at an astonishing rate. Almost a third of Torontonians have arrived in the last decade and more than half were born outside of Canada. The city’s Mohawk name is , which means “the place on the water where the trees are standing". Noah Richler explores the fictional landscape of the city with four of its exciting writers from different generations and backgrounds; Catherine Hernandez, Adrianna Chartrand, Don Gillmor and Deepa Rajagopalan...
Jul 13, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Kwan discusses his internationally best-selling novel, Crazy Rich Asians, with readers from around the world. Chinese-American academic Rachel Chu lives a modest and happy life with her boyfriend and fellow academic Nick. But when Nick invites her home to Singapore to meet the family, everything changes – starting with the first class flights. Saturated with wildly wealthy and deliciously dysfunctional super-elites, this ironic and funny rom-com makes a perfect escapist summer read. (Photo...
Jul 06, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Miriam Toews’s novel, Women Talking, the women of a remote Mennonite colony are hold secret meetings to talk about the crimes of the men who they live alongside. After years of being told that they were suffering from hysterical delusions, the women “came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.” Women Talking is a response to the real life events on a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009. Miriam Toews talks to World Boo...
Jun 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Percival Everett will be discussing his Booker-shortlisted novel The Trees. This powerful and fiercely funny satire centring on revenge and racial justice in America shifts genres between police procedural, magical realism and horror with wit and consummate skill. Percival Everett addresses some of America’s darkest history with an unusual mix of playfulness and political seriousness.
May 04, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Award-winning Australian novelist Charlotte Wood joins Harriett Gilbert to answer questions from readers around the world about her novel, The Weekend. It's a story of grief and friendship; three women meet to clear their deceased friend’s beach house and find themselves uncovering secrets and stirring up memories. (Image: Charlotte Wood. Photo credit: Carly Earl.)
Apr 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Multi award-winning novelist Ann Patchett will be discussing The Dutch House. A dark modern fairytale set against the very real world of post-WWII Philadelphia, tracing the love between a brother and sister, their vanishing mother, distant father and jealous stepmother. Ann Patchett tells the story of a family over five decades with a finely balanced mixture of wit and heartbreak. (Image: Ann Patchett. Photo credit: Emily Dorio.)
Mar 01, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast World Book Café heads to Madrid to talk to writers about a new boom in feminist fiction. A few month after the resignation of President of the Spanish Football Federation over a non-consensual kiss of footballer Jenni Hermoso at the World Cup final, World Book Café investigates how Madrid’s women writers are challenging gender roles in the books world.
Feb 10, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Presenter Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to acclaimed Italian physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli about his runaway bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. A compact and engaging exploration of some of the most fundamental ideas in modern physics this book takes readers on a captivating journey through seven concise chapters, each dedicated to a different topic. From the theory of relativity to quantum mechanics and the nature of time, Rovelli presents complex concepts with...
Feb 01, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Antonio Muñoz Molina answers questions from around the world on his novel In the Night of Time. The panoramic portrait of Spain on the brink of civil war follows the life of Ignacio Abel, master builder and architect, as he navigates an illicit love affair with an American woman as the darkness of war surrounds him. Recorded in the prestigious Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. (Photo: Antonio Muñoz Molina. Credit: Elena Blanco)
Jan 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harriett Gilbert and readers around the globe talk to acclaimed Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka about his Booker Prize-winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Almeida, a gay war photographer, recently deceased, with secrets aplenty, awakes to find himself sitting in line in an ethereal visa office, determined to find out who has murdered him. In a Sri Lanka beset by civil war, death squads and terrorist bombs, the list of suspects is long. He has 'seven moons' a week, to make conta...
Dec 01, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast English author A. S Byatt talks to an audience about her novel 'Possession'. First broadcast in March 2004 (Photo: A S Byatt. Credit:BBC)
Nov 17, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Xiaolu Guo talks about her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. The book was her first written in English and made prestigious fiction shortlists on publication in 2007. Twenty-three year old Zhuang – or Z as she’s called in England because no-one can pronounce her name – arrives to spend a year learning English. The loneliness and strangeness of the city are overwhelming, but as she struggles through the challenges of nouns and verbs and the oddities of English speech, she mee...
Nov 03, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast American writer Michael Chabon talks about his 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. From Jewish mysticism to Houdini to the Golden Age of Comic Books and WWII, Chabon’s immersive novel deals with escape and transformation through the lives of two Jewish boys in New York. Josef Kavalier makes an impossible escape from Prague in 1939, leaving his whole family behind but convinced he’s going to find a way to get them out too. He arrives in New York to stay ...
Oct 02, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast American writer and visual artist Audrey Niffenegger talks about her bestselling novel The Time Traveler’s Wife - a magical love story with a twist. Funny, quirky, and occasionally heartbreaking, this is the story of a relationship lived in the moment – even if those moments are all in the wrong order. Clare and Henry met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when she was twenty-two and he was thirty. Because Henry is a time traveller. He suffers from a rare genetic condi...
Sep 01, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Colombian writer Pilar Quintana talks about her acclaimed novel The Bitch which explores themes of motherhood, loss, and the impact of violence on women's lives. Set against the backdrop of the Pacific coast, the story revolves around Damaris, a young woman longing for a child but unable to conceive. When she discovers a pregnant dog near her home, she becomes obsessed with the idea of adopting one of its puppies. However, her evolving relationship with the puppy becomes entangled with the viole...
Aug 01, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bestselling author Sofi Oksanen answers readers' questions about her novel Purge. It's a harrowing story of sexual violence, betrayal and retribution which charts the troubled history of Estonia during and after the Second World War. Told through the lives of two women, the story starts when a frightened stranger, Zara, arrives on Aliide's doorstep. Gradually, their parallel stories, and connected histories are uncovered. This powerful novel has been translated into 38 languages. (Picture: Autho...
Jul 01, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the centenary of her birth another chance to hear much-loved author Judith Kerr discussing her memorable young adults' novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit with Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world. Set during the Second World War, this semi-autobiographical novel traces the story of a young Jewish girl and her family who flee Berlin just as the Nazis come to power. The journey of a family splintered by conflict, driven by fear and eventually rewarded with reunion is seen through the ...
Jun 05, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Best-selling American author Curtis Sittenfeld discusses her acclaimed debut novel, Prep. Set in an exclusive boarding school in north-eastern America, Prep is an insightful, caustic and funny coming-of-age story and a savage dissection of class, race, and gender. Clever, aspirational Lee Fiora is fourteen years old when her father drops her at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts that she has won a scholarship to. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, she becomes a shrewd o...
May 05, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Presenter Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to acclaimed American author Paul Theroux about his bestselling travel book Deep South. After fifty years crossing the globe, seeking adventure and stories to tell about places far from home, Theroux travels deep into the heart of his native country and discovers a land as profoundly foreign as anything he has previously experienced abroad. He finds in the deep south a place of contradiction, full of unforgettable characters, landscape...
Apr 01, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast World Book Café travels to Paris to meet some of the French capital’s newest writers. Authors Mahir Guven, Blandine Rinkel, Laurent Petitmangin and Capucine Delattre discuss taking on the literary establishment and finding new ways to express themselves. Like many places in the world, questions of equality, diversity and freedom of expression are top of the agenda in France. But it is complicated; the ideal of universalism - meaning every citizen is considered to be the same regardless of class ...
Mar 18, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast This month World Book Club visits Paris, France to be guests of the iconic bookshop on the Left Bank of the River Seine, Shakespeare & Co. There Harriett Gilbert and a bookshop audience talk to acclaimed French writer Marie Darrieussecq about her extraordinary novel Pig Tales. Pig Tales is the story of a young woman who works at a shady Parisian massage parlour, becoming a favourite with her lustful clients until, that is, she slowly and alarmingly metamorphoses into a pig. A dark feminist f...
Mar 04, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Driving too fast through Israel’s Negev desert in his SUV after a long day in the hospital, Dr Eitan Green accidentally hits a lone Eritrean man on the empty moonlit road, killing him instantly. Panic stricken he drives off instead of calling for help and confessing what he’s done. A decision that will change the course of his life irrevocably because the dead man’s wife, the elegant, enigmatic Sikrit, knows what happened. In atonement for his crime Sikrit insists the doctor start treating Eritr...
Feb 04, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
