‘What was that book featured on the radio the other day?’
This week on BBC Radio 4’s ‘A Good Read’, journalist, broadcaster and author Zing Tsjeng and poet Yomi Ṣode join presenter Harriett Gilbert to talk about the books they love.
Zing Tsjeng chooses to discuss ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters.
Juliet Jacques Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn’t hate. She’d scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina’s pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family – and raise the baby together?
Yomi Ṣode picks ‘Open Water’ by Caleb Azumah Nelson.
Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists – he a photographer, she a dancer – trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them.
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it.
Harriett chooses ‘Intimacies’ by Katie Kitamura.
An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.
She’s drawn into simmering personal dramas. Her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage.
Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim’s sister.
And she’s pulled into an explosive political controversy when she’s asked to interpret for a former president accused of war crimes.
She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her, forcing her to decide what she wants from her life.
