A Good Read: Sebastian Faulks and Tessa Hadley
Books and Authors
BBC
4.2 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
VOICES IN THE EVENING by Natalia Ginzburg (trans. DM Low), chosen by Tessa Hadley THE ZONE OF INTEREST by Martin Amis (trans. Jessica Moore), chosen by Sebastian Faulks EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Two authors pick books they love with Harriett Gilbert.
Tessa Hadley (Late In The Day, Free Love, After The Funeral) takes us to post-war Italy with Voices In The Evening by Natalia Ginzburg. The drama, suffering and fascism are in the past, but traumas surface in the day-to-day, with first loves and lost chances.
Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Human Traces, The Seventh Son) chooses The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis, after watching the hit film by Jonathan Glazer and wanting to read the book it was inspired by. The haunting novel follows a Nazi officer who has become enamoured with the Auschwitz camp commandant's wife, and goes inside the minds of the commandant, who lives with his family right next to the concentration camp.
Harriett Gilbert brings Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, a gripping novella set on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with a chance encounter between a desperate Russian conscript and a French woman.
Produced by Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol Join the conversation on Instagram @bbcagoodread
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation. |
| 0:07.0 | It was an extraordinary news story. |
| 0:09.0 | The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny, |
| 0:14.0 | mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared. |
| 0:18.0 | One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for |
| 0:21.7 | Leukin. It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime. I'm Alex von |
| 0:26.7 | Tunselman. This is The Lucan Obsession. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.2 | Hello, I'm Harriet Gilbert. |
| 0:38.9 | Thank you for downloading a good read, the podcasts, |
| 0:42.0 | where two guests and I recommend books we love and describe why we love them. |
| 0:46.4 | Today, two novelists, Sebastian Folks and Tessa Hadley, |
| 0:50.1 | join me to recommend books they've enjoyed. |
| 0:52.7 | Sebastian's the author of 15 novels, including Birdsong, Human Traces and, Just Out in Paperback, The Seventh Sun. |
| 1:00.8 | Tessa's novels include most recently late in the day and Free Love. |
| 1:04.5 | She also writes short stories, her latest collection being last year's after the funeral. |
| 1:10.2 | Tessa, would you start by telling us what your choice of a good read is? |
| 1:14.0 | I've chosen voices in the evening by the Italian novelist Natalia Ginsburg in translation. |
| 1:21.3 | I chose it because I sort of love everything she writes. |
| 1:25.9 | She seems to me to have this extraordinarily limpid, plain voice, |
| 1:33.9 | talking of voices in the evening, |
| 1:35.3 | which does so little commentary or explication, |
| 1:40.5 | but just lays out a slice of Italian post-war, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s life. |
... |
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