World Book Club

This month World Book Club is talking to the acclaimed British writer Margaret Drabble about her remarkable novel The Millstone.At a time when illegitimacy is taboo, Rosamund Stacey is pregnant after a one-night stand. Despite her independence and academic brilliance, she is naïve and unworldly and the choices before her are daunting. She must adapt to life as a single mother, but in the perfection and helplessness of her baby she finds a depth of feeling she has never known before.The Millstone conjures a London of the sixties that is not quite yet swinging and where sexual liberation has not quite yet arrived.(Picture: Margaret Drabble. Photo credit: Ruth Corney.)

Russian writer Dostoyevsky’s haunting classic thriller, Crime and Punishment, is celebrating its 150th birthday this year. Consumed by the idea of his own special destiny, Rashkolnikov is drawn to commit a terrible crime. In the aftermath, he is dogged by madness, guilt and a calculating detective, and a feverish cat-and-mouse game unfolds. Speaking on behalf of the novel are acclaimed Russian writer Boris Akunin and Russian scholar Dr Sarah Young who will be discussing this timeless Russian classic with the audience in the room at Pushkin House and around the world.The three extracts of the book were taken from Oliver Ready’s translation by Penguin Books.A special edition of World Book Club this month at London’s elegant Pushkin House, the UK capital’s Russian cultural hub. This month, as part of the BBC’s Love to Read Campaign, presenter Harriett Gilbert is picking her favourite novel to discuss.(Photo credit: Alexander Aksakov, Getty Images)

This month World Book Club talks to the acclaimed Irish writer Anne Enright about her poignant Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering.In it Veronica, one of the nine surviving Hegarty siblings, is bringing her brother Liam home to Dublin to bury. He walked to his death in the sea in Brighton, his brain muddled by drink, his pockets filled with stones. As the Hegarty clan gathers to mourn at Liam’s funeral Veronica retraces the troubled history and the murky family secrets that have festered over the years and brought tragedy in their wake. A novel about love, death and the darkness of thwarted desire The Gathering has won admirers the world over.

Harriett Gilbert talks to the hugely acclaimed writer DBC Pierre about his best-selling first novel Vernon God Little. An absurdly humorous look at the misadventures of a Texas teen named Vernon Little whose best friend has just killed 16 of their classmates and himself. In the wake of the tragedy, the townspeople seek both answers and vengeance; because Vernon was the killer's closest friend, he becomes the focus of their fury.Hailed by the critics and lauded by readers for its riotous and scathing portrayal of America in an age of trial by media, materialism, and violence, Vernon God Little was an international sensation when it was first published in 2003 and awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize.(Photo: DBC Pierre outside BBC Old Broadcasting House)

We talking to acclaimed Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez about his dark and compelling novel The Sound of Things Falling. Vasquez explores the recent tortured history of his home country through a complex interweaving of personal stories and confronts the disastrous consequences of the war between the drugs cartels and government forces which played out so violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above.After witnessing a friend’s murder, Antonio discovers the many ways in which his own and other lives have been deformed by his country’s recent brutal past. His journey leads him back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change; a time before drug-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare.(Photo: Juan Gabriel Vasquez. Credit: Hermance Triay)

This month we’re in The Book Lounge Bookshop in Cape Town, South Africa and talking to the Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng about his Man Asian Literary Prize-winning novel, The Garden of Evening Mists.This haunting tale, set in the jungles of Malaya during and after World War II, centres on Yun Ling, the sole survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in which her sister perished.Driven by the desire to honour her sister’s memory through the creation of a lush and sensuous garden Yun Ling falls into a relationship with the enigmatic Japanese gardener Aritomo and begins a journey into her past, inextricably linked with the secrets of her troubled country’s history.(Picture: Tan Twan Eng. Credit: Lloyd Smith.)

To celebrate the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, World Book Club travels back to Victorian England to discuss her captivating and enduring tale, Jane Eyre with writer Tracy Chevalier and biographer Claire Harman in a packed BBC Radio Theatre. The novel traces the fortunes of a young orphaned girl searching for a sense of belonging and identity in a hostile world, plagued by both gender and social inequality.Weaving together the sweeping romance between Jane and Mr Rochester, a social commentary on nineteenth century England and set against the eerie Gothic backdrop of imposing mansions and wild moorland, Brontë has produced one of the world’s most loved and timeless tales.(Photo: Charlotte Bronte. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

This month, as part of the World Service’s Identity Season, World Book Club is in Cape Town, home of acclaimed Somali writer Nuruddin Farah, where we’ll be talking to him about his novel, Maps. This moving and dramatic book is the first of three novels which make up Nuruddin Farah’s Blood in the Sun trilogy. Maps traces the journey of a young orphaned boy, Askar, who is taken under the wing of a loving surrogate mother, Misra. Set in both Somalia and Ethiopia with an ever looming backdrop of conflict and political turmoil, Askar struggles to find and forge his identity in a land ravaged by war. Farah’s lucid exploration of struggle – both internal and external; personal and political – is as profound as it is compelling and draws on his own complex relationship with his native Somalia.(Picture credit: Jeffrey Wilson.)

This month we talk to the much-loved German-born, British author and illustrator Judith Kerr about her classic children’s novel, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Set during World War Two, this semi-autobiographical novel traces the story of a young Jewish girl and her family who flee Berlin just as the Nazis come to power. The journey of a family splintered by conflict, driven by fear and eventually rewarded with reunion is seen through the eyes of the nine-year-old Anna. Judith Kerr’s novel, by turns heart-lifting and heart-rending has stood the test of time. Celebrating its 45th anniversary this year it continues to be enjoyed by readers of all ages to this day.(Picture: Judith Kerr. Credit: Eliz Huseyin)

This quixotic ‘novel of ideas’ blends philosophical reflection with the haunting tale of Herman Mussert, a retired, outmoded ancient language teacher preoccupied with Classical antiquity. After falling asleep one evening in Amsterdam, he mysteriously wakes the next morning in a hotel room in Lisbon where he slept with another man’s wife twenty years earlier. From here Mussert embarks on an enigmatic journey of the mind, contemplating passion, death, wisdom and disillusionment. Presented by Harriet Gilbert.