Recorded at the Verbal Arts Centre in Londonderry/City of Derry, James Naughtie and readers talk to one of Ireland's finest writers - Jennifer Johnston. 

Now in her eighties, Jennifer has been called 'The Quiet Woman' of Irish literature. Her distinguished career has spanned more than 40 years and has netted the Whitbread Prize among her many awards. Her books are taught on the Irish school curriculum and in American Universities. 

The chosen novel for this edition of Bookclub is one of her later ones, The Gingerbread Woman. Like many of her novels, this story deals with personal conflict, as two characters meet by chance one day on a cliff top overlooking Dublin Bay and form an uneasy friendship. Yet the conflict between these two mirrors a bigger question - the conflict between the North and South of Ireland. 

Jennifer Johnston is a writer who watches and listens. She's best known for her portrayal of different Irelands, notably the group called the Anglo-Irish, who appear in what became known as The Big House novels. More recently she has moved her protagonists out of the countryside and into the affluent suburbs.

Jennifer grew up in a theatrical house - her father Denis was the leading playwright of his day and her mother Shelah an actress. Jennifer describes how her literary upbringing has resonated through her writing, and how much she enjoys writing dialogue.

As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.

May's Bookclub choice : 'Be Near Me' by Andrew O'Hagan. 

Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on April 3, 2011.

Jennifer Johnston

Mohsin Hamid talks to James Naughtie and readers about his bestselling book The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This edition of Bookclub will be broadcast just two days after the novel has been featured as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, and it's a timely choice as we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11. 

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a sparse, gripping, short novel that tackles the complex issues of Islamic fundamentalism and America's 'war on terror' with sympathy and balance.

It's the story of Changez, a high-flying young Pakistani man living in New York at the time of the attacks, whose life is turned around on that day, and who in the aftermath returns to his native Pakistan. 

Changez tells his life story to an unnamed stranger, an American man, at a tea house in Lahore. Readers may recognise the same device was used by Albert Camus in his novel The Fall - and Mohsin Hamid acknowledges the debt to the French novel.

As night falls, the tension grows between the Changez and the American and a sense of mystery and suspense grows page by page. Who is this American? Is he a spy? Does he have a gun in his pocket, and what exactly has the 'reluctant fundamentalist' come to believe? This novel has one of the most ambiguous endings in contemporary fiction and readers will be telling Mohsin Hamid how they think it finishes.

October's Bookclub choice : 'The God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy.

Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on September 4, 2011.

Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Ben Macintyre discusses Agent Zigzag - his bestselling book on the true story of a professional criminal named Eddie Chapman, a successful British double agent who infiltrated the Nazi intelligence services during World War II.

A notorious safe-breaker before the war, Chapman duped the Germans so successfully that he was awarded their highest decoration, the Iron Cross. He remains the only British citizen ever to win one. 

His story is one of chance and charm. Recruited as a spy whilst serving time in a Jersey jail, Chapman persuaded his German spy-masters that he was serving the Third Reich, but when they parachuted him into Norfolk in 1944 he delivered himself immediately to MI5. Because of the advanced and highly secretive code breaking at Bletchley Park, MI5 were expecting this unknown spy, with his German name of Agent Fritz. Reflecting his ambivalent status, his new British handlers called him Agent Zigzag. 

Ben Macintyre says that Chapman's missions of sabotage and feeding false messages back to Germany were instrumental in saving hundreds of lives, as well as averting the V1 bombers from St Paul's Cathedral.

James Naughtie presents and a group of Radio 4 listeners ask the questions.

February's Bookclub choice : Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on January 6, 2013.

Ben Macintyre - Agent Zigzag

Turkey's leading female novelist Elif Shafak discusses her novel The Forty Rules of Love.

The novel is about finding love and is written in two strands. One is the friendship between a whirling dervish and the Sufi poet Rumi in 13th century Anatolia; the other is about a mother in contemporary America who finds inspiration in the historical story to break away from an unhappy life.

Amazingly, Elif wrote the book in English, which she first learnt at the age of ten. She then worked with professional translators to write it again in Turkish.

Elif Shafak explains the importance of Sufi mysticism in the novel and in her life. She talks about the influence of her grandmother's superstitions, about the transformation of modern Turkey and how she was prosecuted - and acquitted - in 2006 for 'denigrating Turkish national identity' because of her writing.

First published in 2010, The Forty Rules of Love has now been translated into over 30 languages.

James Naughtie presents and a group of readers ask the questions.


May's Bookclub choice : Ice by Gillian Clarke

Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on April 7, 2013.

Elif Shafak - The Forty Rules of Love

With James Naughtie. Celebrated Irish writer John Banville discusses his novel The Sea which won the Man Booker prize in 2005.

In The Sea, middle-aged art historian Max Morden loses his wife to cancer and is compelled to go back to the seaside resort where he spent childhood holidays. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

John Banville talks about the power of revisiting places from childhood, how he wanted to be a painter as a teenager but found he had no talent. He explains how he painstakingly writes his novels over many years, creating sentence after sentence, but in the end he always feels the book is an embarrassment and a failure, and that he must move on to the next novel. 

May's Bookclub choice is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.

Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on April 6, 2014.

John Banville - The Sea

With James Naughtie. Recorded at the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals, Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties. First published in 1989, the book is widely acclaimed as his finest.

The novel engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty and nationality as it follows a family through the divisions in France during World War II, and the repercussions which last for decades. 

In the early 1950s Etienne de Balafré strives to find out what happened to his father when the German invasion of 1940 divided the country between collaboration and resistance. Where some might see an accomplice, the author Allan Massie seeks to understand a human being making difficult choices.

As always on Bookclub, a group of especially invited readers join in the discussion.

October's Bookclub choice : Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed Guest : Allan Massie
Producer : Dymphna Flynn. Published on September 7, 2014.

Allan Massie - A Question of Loyalties

James Naughtie and readers talk to acclaimed authors about their best known novels. Authors include: Douglas Adams, Alan Bennett, Alice Sebold and Maya Angelou.

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