Episodes
-
Impressions of Cromer(Saffron Summerfield)
Impressions of Cromer Saffron Summerfield With this soundscape I created a jaunty tune as a basic canvas to reflect and bounce the sounds of this joyful seaside town in high summer. To me, Cromer has a strong ‘sense of place’ which echoes in the local voices I heard and recorded. The high-pitched...
-
20 - Nineteen-Hundred (Alessandro Baricco)
Danny Boodman TD Lemon Nineteen-Hundred was born on a ship and on a ship he died. In between, he didn't play music, he played something else. And if you asked him what he thought about while he was playing, he would tell you about that time he was strolling on the Pont Neuf, waiting for sunset......
-
19 - Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar)
In 1966, Gregory Rabassa won the first National Book Award to recognise the work of a translator for his English-language edition of Hopscotch. Julio Cortázar was so pleased with Rabassa's translation of Hopscotch that he recommended the translator to Gabriel García Márquez when García Márquez…
more -
18 - Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)
Infectively ridiculous, inevitably imaginative and charmingly irreverent Pippi is the kind of friend who lies all the time, but is also too funny to just drop. AND she's really, really, really strong. She can lift her horse, her dad is the king of the cannibals and she also happens to be rich.
-
17 - Cady's Life (Anne Frank)
As well as her diary, Anne Frank wrote so much more when she was hiding with her family in what she called "The Secret Annex". She wrote tales, rewrote paragraphs and sentences from other books, and she began a novel titled Cady's Life, which begins with a young girl waking up after a car…
more -
16 - War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
It all starts with Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honour and favourite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna, getting bored. 587,287 words later, you get The Greatest Russian Novel of All Times. We give you the first 2000, and suggest that you find a quiet spot and read the rest, soon.
-
15 - The Paul Street Boys (Ferenc Molnár, read by George Szirtes)
A Hungarian youth classic novel of war and friendship, here is an excerpt from chapter 1, read by a most illustrious guest: British/Hungarian poet and literary translator George Szirtes.
-
14 - The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
A stranger comes to town. Only, the town is Moscow and the stranger is the Devil. Oh, and there's a woman and a giant cat.
-
13 - Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." One of the most powerful book openings in Russian literature, followed by a short, opening chapter about how and why Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, Stiva, has messed up his marriage big time and probably needs a bit of...
-
12 - The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (Anonymous)
He became a symbol for all those streetwise children around the world and he is almost five centuries old... Lazarillo de Tormes still has a couple of tricks and a funny, but at times moving, story to tell.
-
11 - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Machado de Assis)
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is a fictional autobiography written from beyond the grave. You asked for a playful narrative, clever humour, intriguing psychological analysis and clear, original writing and Machado de Assis delivered. 140 years ago. Brazilian writer and poet Joaquim Maria...
-
10 - Les Misérables (Victor Hugo)
A humble man, the bishop of Digne. But his small act of kindness will trigger an incommensurable change in Jean Valjean's life, so it is worth to take our time and find a bit more about him. After all, "the great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of…
more -
09 - Zorba the Greek (Nikos Kazantzakis)
Head for the beach with a group of friends, hum the tune for Zorba's Dance and lose yourself in a passionate sirtaki until your head won't stop spinning. You are about to meet a character who will encompass all of this. Zorba is your head spinning; he's that friend your parents told you to worry...