‘What was that book featured on the radio the other day?’
BBC Radio 4’s rather splendid ‘A Good Read’ with Harriett Gilbert this week featured Agnes Poirier the French writer and broadcaster and British-Nigerian novelist Nikki May – both introduce us to their favourite books.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. The world will never be the same again. Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful world is threatened. If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?
https://coles-books.co.uk/station-eleven-by-emily-st-john-mandel
Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig
These four Stefan Zweig stories, newly translated by the award-winning Anthea Bell, are among his most celebrated and compelling work. The titular tale is a devastating depiction of unrequited love, which inspired a classic Hollywood film, directed by Max Ophüls and starring Joane Fontaine. Elsewhere in the collection, a young man mistakes the girl he loves for her sister, two erstwhile lovers meet after an age spent apart, and a married woman repays a debt of gratitude to her childhood sweetheart. Expertly paced, laced with the acutely accurate psychological detail and empathy that are Zweig’s trademarks, this is a powerful addition to Pushkin’s growing collection of his work.
https://coles-books.co.uk/letter-from-an-unknown-woman-and-other-stories-by-stefan-zweig-author
The Trees by Percival Everett
The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body – that of a man who resembles Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in the same town 65 years before. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot.
https://coles-books.co.uk/the-trees-by-percival-everett
The programme can be found on the BBC Radio 4 website HERE
