A Good Read: Inua Ellams and Ted Hodgkinson

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD by Benjamin Labatut (translated by Adrian Nathan West), chosen by Ted Hodgkinson ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad, chosen by Inua Ellams GHOSTING: A DOUBLE LIFE by Jennie Erdal, chosen by Harriett Gilbert

As Head of Literature and Spoken Word-programming at the Southbank Centre in London, writers and writing are at the heart of Ted Hodgkinson's work. In 2020 he chaired the judging panel of the International Booker Prize and he has judged many other awards, including the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His choice of a good read is a slim, genre-defying book by Chilean author Benjamin Labatut which packs a huge punch. It's about the scientists and mathematicians whose work has shaped our world, and the unintended - sometimes horrifying - consequences of scientific advancement.

Inua Ellams is a playwright, poet and curator. His work includes Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half-God of Rainfall, and an updating of Chekhov's Three Sisters, set during the Biafran Civil War, and he's recently been announced as one of the writers of the next series of Dr Who. His choice is Isabella Hammad's 2023 novel Enter Ghost. After a disastrous love affair, British-Palestinian actress Sonia goes to stay with her sister in Haifa. Intending the visit as a holiday, she finds herself investigating her family's history and getting involved in a production of Hamlet, to be staged in the West Bank.

Presenter Harriett Gilbert's choice is Ghosting by Jennie Erdal. A fascinating account of Jennie's time as ghostwriter for 'Tiger' (the publisher Naim Attallah), penning everything from novels to love letters in his name.

Producer: Mair Bosworth

Transcript

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0:00.0	On Radio 4, the more you listen, the more you see.
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Brian Cox.
0:05.7	And I'm Robin Ince, and this is The Infinite Monkey Cage.
0:08.4	In this series, we're going to have a planet off.
0:10.9	I feel like Jupiter wins.
0:12.9	And after all of that, we're just going to chill out a bit.
0:16.0	We're talking about your bog standard.
0:17.9	Ice, not the fancy one.
0:20.2	Science with funny bits.
0:22.0	The new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage.
0:24.2	Listen on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
0:29.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:33.2	You love books? We love books.
0:35.3	And we're going to recommend some we particularly like. See what you think.
0:39.5	My guest today are first the Nigerian-born poet, playwright and curator Inua Ellums.
0:45.3	Inuwa's plays commissioned by, among others, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre,
0:49.8	include Barbershop Chronicles and Three Sisters, which transplants Chekhov's drama to the 1960s Nigerian Civil War.
0:58.0	With Inua is Ted Hodgkinson, head of literature and spoken word programming at the South Bank Centre in London.
1:05.0	In 2020, Ted chaired the judging panel of the International Booker Prize, and among the many other awards for which he's been a judge is the Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
1:15.3	Ted, would you start us off? What have you chosen as a good read?
1:19.1	I have chosen When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labartut.
1:24.4	It's a book that is fiction and innovatively combines fiction with real events, real lives, real scientific discoveries that have profound implications for the way that we live now.
	...

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