Geography asks three questions:The World Book Club is one of my favorite BBC programs. Or should I write programmes?
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| Harriett Gilbert: A third-generation writer who does her research! |
Its entire two decades of episodes are now available as a podcast, and I find myself listening frequently. Because I am prone to fumbling my podcast app, I often hear an episode several times, and I do not mind at all. I have read only a small fraction of the books under discussion, but I find that presenter Harriett Gilbert leads an entertaining and profoundly educational discussion with every participating author. I will enjoy an episode even if I have heard it recently.
The World Book Club is appropriately named. Each month a book is selected and announced so that readers have a chance to read the book and send in questions. The author then meets with the presenter and invited guests in person, usually at BBC's Bush House in London. The author is then introduced, always taking note of awards won and the number of languages into which their work has been translated.
Gilbert and her team then curate questions from the live audience, from emailed questions, and from phone calls, along with her own questions that arise from her expert reading of the work. I use the term "curate" because the questions tend to follow a very helpful pattern, with general questions that might be asked of any writer near the beginning, followed by increasingly detailed and sophisticated questions that would arise only from a careful reading.
Gilbert graciously acknowledges each question, sometimes adding an expert edit as she repeats it, and always acknowledging mentioning where the caller or writer is from. And because she is a BBC journalist, she always pronounces names of both people and places correctly! In any given discussion, it is likely that people from at least three continents will have participated.
The list below is from all of the episodes for which I could readily connect the author to the African continent. Most of these are novels set somewhere in Africa and written by African authors. I have listed only one country as a kind of shorthand -- listen to the episodes to learn that many of these authors call several countries home and that many of the books are set in multiple places -- or in some cases fictional countries. Moreover, as is often the case, these episodes have a focus on one book, but with some authors a broader body of work enters th conversation.
Each entry below includes a link to a BBC page and/or a Spotify page as available. I also include dates of each author's life and each novel's publication.
February 2002 - Zimbabwe
Chenjerai Hove (1956 - 2015) Ancestors (1997)
(Spotify)
This is just the third episode of World Book Club -- the interest in Africa comes early in this series. It is just a conversation between the author and the host -- there were no questions from audience yet.
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