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.

When Colson Whitehead made the cover of Time magazine in 2019, the publication dubbed him

America's Storyteller.

Now, two eventful years later, and with a second Pulitzer under his belt, it's a title

that comes with a certain degree of expectation. After all, he is the only writer to win fiction

Pulitzer's for consecutive novels. Whitehead's early books, The Intuitionist and Sag Harbor,

embraced relatively contemporary issues,

but it's his uncompromising examination of America's history in his later fiction that led him

to international acclaim with the Underground Railroad and the Nickel Boys.

His new novel, Harlem Shuffle, is another period piece, this time littered with a gallimorphie of factual detail which breathes new life into the black experience of 1950s and 60s New York.

It's a rambunctious departure from its previous two. This time it's a heist novel, a story of a time and place rich in vivid characters, savvy dialogue and complex morality.

At its centre is Ray Carney, a furniture salesman.

From the outside, at least, he appears the most ordinary of protagonists,

who just so happens to find himself living through extraordinary times.

Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked, in practice and ambition.

...