You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Before this age of intense peddling, Paul Theroux once lamented, the writer was an obscure

and somewhat mythical figure, the subject of whispers, an outlaw, an enigma, an exile. In many cases, the author had

no public face and all you knew was the work. A writer then was nomic, priest-like, a magician,

not merely writing a book, but making a world and creating a new language. Well, today on Open

Book, we're delving into that mystique of the author. Later, I'll

be speaking with Laura Wilson, whose new book gathers intimate and often counterintuitive

author photographs of camera-shy scribes. And we begin with one of the most enigmatic writers of

our time. Combeck McCarthy is renowned for his uncompromising style and unapologetic refusal to be part of that intense peddling.

Now 89 years old and as elusive as ever, 16 years since his Pulitzer Prize winning The Road.

He's bringing out two brand new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, which remind us of the brilliance he captured in previous work,

like No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses and the Crossing.

The passenger is noirish and mysterious with dead ends and rabbit holes,

while its spiritual coda, Stella Maris, drew out next month.

It's more experimental, a philosophical conversation,

...