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Arts & Ideas

George Szirtes, Valeria Luiselli, Jhumpa Lahiri

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2599 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Valeria Luiselli talks to Laurence Scott about the desert border between Mexico and USA & capturing the sound, history and contemporary politics in her novel Lost Children Archive. The poet George Szirtes' first prose work brings his Hungarian mother superbly to life and works backwards through the years to explore the truth of being alive in the world. And Pulitzer-prize-winning short story writer Jhumpa Lahiri on her new anthology of stories from Italy, and why the Italian language releases a part of her unfulfilled by either her Bengali heritage or American upbringing.

Jhumpa Lahiri has edited The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which is out now. Valeria Luiselli's novel Lost Children Archive is out now George Szirtes' memoir The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter is out now

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 that it's a long time ago, right?

0:23.3

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

0:28.9

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

0:33.2

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

0:36.7

Hello, I'm Lauren Scott.

0:38.1

Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program,

0:41.7

which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate.

0:46.9

If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe.

0:49.3

Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you get your podcasts,

0:52.3

and while you're there, please rate and review us.

0:54.9

It'll help other people find us.

0:58.0

Hello, just butting in.

0:59.8

I'm Ellen and Rosamond Baraklough, and I'm here to tell you about time travellers, the BBC Radio 3 podcast that's packed full of quirky stories from the corners of history.

1:10.7

If you'd like to know how a polar bear ended up catching its dinner in the Thames,

1:15.3

why Poldark was much loved in post-fascist Spain,

1:19.2

what happens if you give a spider too much caffeine,

1:22.2

how the suffragettes weaponised roller skating,

1:24.8

and what any of this has to do with anything,

1:28.0

then you'll have to subscribe to the Time Travelers podcast.

1:31.9

Find us on BBC Sounds.

1:37.3

The voices of the dead, the voices of the lost and the missing.

1:41.3

How do writers revive these voices on the page? With me to consider this question

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