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Last broadcast on Mon, 21 Jun 2010, 13:32 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
The best of the world's arts, film, music, literature and music brought to you every day. Presented by Harriett Gilbert.
In today's programme: The Portugeuse novelist Jose Saramago, a South African opera, dramatising the defining moments in the life of Nelson Mandela, and the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is 50 years old.
Jose Saramago
The acclaimed Portuguese novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998, has died at the age of 87.Saramago, a communist and atheist, only began to become recognised for his work in his fifties. One of his best-known novels is Blindness, written in 1995, which tells the story of a country whose entire population lose their sight. Professor Amanada Hopkinson, who recently turned Saramago's blogs into a book called The Notebook discusses his legacy.
African Songbook
The eyes of the world will be firmly focussed on South Africa for the next month as they host the 2010 Football World Cup. In celebration of the event, Cape Town Opera has produced a new three act opera, dramatising the defining moments in the life of Nelson Mandela. From the music of the Xhosa people from the 1920's and 1930's, to the sounds of the local dance hall and finally the powerful emotions of incarceration and freedom, the production fuses traditional African music and rhythms with old style opera. Journalist and writer Marianne Thamm reviews the production.
To Kill a Mockingbird at 50
Within its 300 pages, the small fictional town of Maycomb in the Depression-ravaged American South is memorably evoked by Harper Lee
(above). Her debut novel in June 1960 -published just before the peak of the American civil rights movement,was a huge critical and commercial success, earning the Pulitzer Prize, sales of 30 million and translation into 40 languages.The acclaimed African American writer Attica Locke,Mississippi-based Nigerian novelist Sefi Atta and the US academic Diane Roberts appraise this iconic book on its 50th anniversary.
Chapters
Broadcasts
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Fri 18 Jun 201022:32
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Sat 19 Jun 201003:32
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Mon 21 Jun 201009:32
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Mon 21 Jun 201013:32
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