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.

Meaning for me is connection.

When I was looking for meaning in writing inland, I was looking for connections.

And the major connection is between a well in Hungary and a fish pond in a Melbourne suburb.

How does a Hungarian well connect to an Australian fish pond? It's one of the many questions

thrown up by Gerald Manane in his novel Inland. He's been compared to Proust, Italo Calvino and

Samuel Beckett, praised by writers from J.M. Kurtzir and Helen Garner to

Teju Cole and Claire Louise Bennett. And now, after many years in which his books were out

of print or barely available, both here and in his native Australia, he's starting to receive

the attention his work as long deserved. At 84 years old, he's considered a frontrunner

for the Nobel Prize in Literature,

and new readers are finding their way to his work in increasing numbers, despite the fact that

he's written what he says is his last novel, 2017's Border Districts.

This month sees the republication of 1988's Inland, a watershed entry in his bibliography, which is a difficult book to

summarise, but that captures some of the key traits of his writing. Exquisitely written,

...