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11.22.63 by Stephen King
On 22nd December 1963, the 35th president of the United States John F Kennedy was barely 1000 days in office when he was assassinated by the now legendary lone gunman.
Stephen King’s Biography
Stephen King was a teenager when Lee Harvey Oswald fired his shot, and in 11.22.63 the supremo of the horror genre asks what would happen if we could change that critical moment in history? -
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Joan Didion gives a frank and confessional account of loss and family life emerging from the death of her daughter Quintana. Not only does she recall in vivid detail snapshots of her daughter’s childhood, she also posits on her own role of mother.
Blue Nights by Joan Didion as reviewed in the New York Times
Didion reveals that she cannot resist feeling, in some way, responsible for her daughter’s death. Consequentially Blue Nights also becomes an examination of the ageing process, something she finds difficult to acknowledge, never mind accept. -
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
Historian, philosopher, author, journalist, and all round gregarious multi-tasker Umberto Eco is nothing short of prolific.
Umberto Eco’s Website
Eco’s flamboyant style and fascination with conspiracy theories, continues with his latest novel The Prague Cemetery.
Set in late 19th century Paris, the story follows Simone Simonini, a secret agent versed in forgery and bomb making, but who is also capable of much darker deeds. -
Apricot Jam by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Despite winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia just 4 years later for depicting the horrors of his experiences in the Siberian labour camps in his book The Gulag Archipelago.
Aleksandr Solzhentisyn’s Biography on the Nobel Prize Website
Fleeing to the west, his reception from the worlds press was a marked difference to his treatment in Russia.
It was to be 20 years before he was able to return to his homeland, after Mikhail Gorbachev permitted his books to be published.
Apricot Jam and Other Stories were the subsequent works he produced on his return and three years after his death they have been translated into English.
Credits
- Presenter
- Kirsty Wark
- Participant
- Germaine Greer
- Participant
- John Carey
- Participant
- Susan Hitch
- Director
- Derek Livesey
