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Hello, on today's program, Edna O'Brien tackles war crimes, a trip around Britain's literary hotspots and nostalgia Manhattan style.

I think New York is obsessed with its past.

There's a wonderful scene in the Age of Innocence,

and a bunch of characters from the 1850s are sitting around

talking about the glory days of the 1830s,

and oh, it was so much better then.

It was always better then.

Novelist Garth Risk Horberg,

and we'll hear more from him and other writers

later about the lure of the Big Apples past. We start though with Edna O'Brien, the iconic

octogenarian who kick-started her literary career by having her risque debut the country girls

banned in her native island. Through the intervening decades, she's refused to be cowed by

convention or by censorship, and in a long line of wonderful novels has tracked the experience

of being a woman over the last century, while also embracing themes of displacement and isolation,

the lot of immigrants, and the strong-armed tactics of the Catholic Church.

Her lyrical prose at times veers close to poetry.

Her characters are beautifully drawn,

and her settings, she often returns to her native west of Ireland,

are as feckoned as those green fields.

Her latest novel could be her most ambitious to date and has already been hailed by her fan Philip Roth as her masterpiece.

The Little Red Chairs describes the arrival of a self-proclaimed healer, Dr. Vladimir Dregan,

...