Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers: Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2016
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman share an interest in science fiction, the role of women and the power of fiction. They are in conversation with Philip Dodd as part of a week of Free Thinking broadcasts tying into this year's London Literature Festival at Southbank Centre, London and its theme of Living in Future Times.
Margaret Atwood's new novel Hag-Seed is a re-imagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest. She is also being awarded this year's Pen Pinter Prize.
Naomi Alderman's new novel The Power will be published at the end of October. It imagines a world where women are endowed with an automatic power to hurt.
Producer: Fiona McLean
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | Welcome to the arts and ideas download from the free thinking team at the BBC. |
| 0:37.5 | Hello, tonight. Free thinking at at its simplest, and I hope it's best. |
| 0:42.2 | We bring together the novelist Margaret Atwood to talk about the power of art and forgiveness |
| 0:47.0 | in her new book, Hagseed, with Nermie Alderman, whose new novel The Power |
| 0:51.8 | sees women begin to take control across the globe, with power literally at their fingertips. |
| 0:59.3 | But first, Margaret Atwood, who came to fame with her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, |
| 1:05.2 | which imagined a 21st century America run by male Puritans. |
| 1:10.1 | Think Oliver Cromwell meets the early settlers of America. |
| 1:13.7 | She's written many novels, plays, poetry since then, and been awarded numerous prizes, |
| 1:18.9 | including the Booker Prize and the 2016 Pen Pinter Prize. Her new novel, Hagseed, is part of a series |
| 1:26.2 | where writers reimagined Shakespeare. |
| 1:29.0 | Margaret Atwood has taken The Tempest, that late play of Shakespeare set on an island, |
| 1:34.1 | where Prospero, the deposed and exiled duke, rules over the Monster Caliban, the Spirit Ariel, |
| 1:40.6 | and his daughter Miranda. Those who deposed him, including his brother, are brought to |
| 1:45.8 | the island by magic, where Prospero through Ariel takes his revenge. Hagseed casts a sacked |
| 1:52.9 | Canadian theatre director as Prospero or Felix. Out of work, he begins to stage plays in his |
| 1:59.7 | local prison where he has an opportunity to punish those who got rid of him from his beloved theatre. |
| 2:06.7 | They are now political bigwigs and visit the prison. Can revenge make you free? |
| 2:11.8 | Or is it the case, as Shakespeare in Antony Cleopatra puts it, |
... |
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