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The Guildhall, Central London. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:05 | |
For one night every year, this chamber is packed with | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
the great and the good of the literary world. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
And they come here for the announcement of an award. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
And the winner of the Man Booker Prize For Fiction... | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
Is Marlon James. | 0:00:18 | 0:00:19 | |
Julian Barnes. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:22 | |
Hilary Mantel. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:24 | |
In just a few days' time, we will know who has won | 0:00:30 | 0:00:35 | |
the 2016 Man Booker Prize when it is announced here on this very stage. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
The big names haven't really made the cut this year. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
Instead, it's a kind of a genre-bending, intriguing mix of | 0:00:41 | 0:00:45 | |
thrillers, short stories, historical novels, | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
true crime and even a bit of comedy. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
In this episode of Artsnight, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
six novels and six authors will be brought to you by six | 0:00:53 | 0:00:56 | |
reviewers introducing their pick of the shortlist. | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
Sara Pascoe will be unwrapping a sick and twisted Christmas thriller. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
George the Poet interrogates race in modern America. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
I'll be pondering nine stories of modern masculinity. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:15 | |
Mariella Frostrup analyses a toxic mother-daughter relationship. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
Pianist Steven Osborne examines Chinese history filtered | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
through the music of Bach. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
And Val McDermid will be investigating a triple | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
murder in the Scottish Highlands. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
It may be the most wide-open race for years and frankly, | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
I wouldn't like to place a bet but hopefully, by the end of this | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
half hour, you'll have made your own mind up. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:41 | |
Welcome to the 2016 Man Booker Prize shortlist. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
Our first novel is the only debut to make the cut. | 0:01:54 | 0:01:57 | |
A deliciously warped festive thriller, | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:03 | |
We searched long and hard to find someone sick enough to root | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
for this novel. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:09 | |
Step forward comedian Sara Pascoe. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
It was the week of Christmas 1964. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:18 | |
The Christmas tree was twinkling. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:20 | |
The presents were wrapped and ready. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
Happiness and joy were all around. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:27 | |
That is, of course, unless you're Eileen Dunlop. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
She's the central character in Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
And, Eileen, herself, will tell you that she's not the most | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
pleasant person. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:39 | |
She shoplifts, she's morbid, she's sexually obsessed, | 0:02:39 | 0:02:43 | |
she takes loads of laxatives and she touches herself a lot | 0:02:43 | 0:02:45 | |
and smells her hands afterwards. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
I like her. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:49 | |
She lives in a place in New England, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:50 | |
a suburban town she refers to as X-Ville, and she doesn't like | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
a lot about her life but everything is about to change. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
The snow is falling. The sense of doom is decidedly unfestive. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:04 | |
As Eileen herself tells us, "I liked books about awful things. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:08 | |
"Murder, illness, death." | 0:03:08 | 0:03:12 | |
Eileen is creepy, perverse and unsettling. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
It's a psychological page-turner ramping up to the sickest | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
Christmas Eve party in literary history. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
Merry Christmas. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
I think it's about time we meet | 0:03:26 | 0:03:28 | |
the warped mind responsible, Ottessa Moshfegh. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
Hello. We have created an Eileen Christmas here. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
Yeah, I was wondering why you had the Christmas tree behind you | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
in October. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
So there is a huge market at the moment for | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
psychological thrillers, unreliable narrators | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
and especially, kind of, antihero female characters. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:52 | |
But your novel seems to also turn that genre on its head | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
and take it to a new place. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:56 | |
Was that intentional? | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
I don't think I could have written a straight genre novel. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:02 | |
-I wouldn't have had that in me. -Yeah. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
-It would never be convincing. -Yeah. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:05 | |
My intention was to tell this weird story, unveiling | 0:04:05 | 0:04:11 | |
a couple of things that don't usually get unveiled in commercial | 0:04:11 | 0:04:16 | |
fiction and I used the psychological thriller noir style | 0:04:16 | 0:04:22 | |
because I thought that that would attract the readers, | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
and I like that world, I like operating in that world. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:26 | |
I hated almost everything. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
I was very unhappy and angry all the time. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
I tried to control myself and that only made me more awkward, | 0:04:34 | 0:04:38 | |
unhappier and angrier. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
There's no better way to say it. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:43 | |
I was not myself back then. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
I was someone else. I was Eileen. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
Some people have described the character of Eileen as kind of | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
very crude or repulsive which I didn't personally find. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
To me, she just seemed like a woman. But what do you think about that? | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
Eileen, as a character, is certainly not unusual in everyday life. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:05 | |
Maybe she's unusual in literature. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
We don't get to see a self-loathing female character as intimately | 0:05:07 | 0:05:13 | |
as we do Eileen in many places. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
With the laxatives, my movements were torrential. Oceanic. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:23 | |
As though all of my insides had melted and were now gushing out, | 0:05:23 | 0:05:28 | |
a sludge that stank distinctly of chemicals. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
In those cases, I stood up to flush, dizzy and sweaty and cold. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:37 | |
Then laid down as the world seemed to revolve around me. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
Those were good times. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
Was it always set at Christmas? | 0:05:44 | 0:05:45 | |
Was there something about Christmas that really attracted you? | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
Well, Christmas is sort of the epitome of family trauma | 0:05:48 | 0:05:53 | |
-dressed up as idyllic, cosy fun time. -OK. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:58 | |
And Eileen is so much a story of how...what things look like on | 0:05:58 | 0:06:05 | |
-the outside can betray what they are on the inside. -Yeah. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
That was the kind of mysterious landscape I wanted for the book. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
Thank you. Fantastic. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:14 | |
Congratulations on being on the shortlist. Happy Christmas. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:17 | |
The next novel on the shortlist is a meditation | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
on music's universal power. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
An epic story of 20th century China and how music allowed | 0:06:43 | 0:06:46 | |
generations of two families to find their voice. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:50 | |
And it resonated deeply with acclaimed pianist Steven Osborne. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
Why do we make music? | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
What can music communicate that words cannot? | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
Madeleine Thien's compelling novel takes these questions | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
and threads through the brutal history of modern China. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
This is a big novel with big themes and ideas. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
It's a gripping saga which tells the story of two parallel | 0:07:18 | 0:07:21 | |
families across three generations. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
The novel follows these families through the huge | 0:07:25 | 0:07:28 | |
historical events of the Great Leap Forward, | 0:07:28 | 0:07:30 | |
Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
And running through their intertwined stories, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:40 | |
we hear the repeated refrain of Bach's Goldberg Variations. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
Why did you choose music as a way into this topic? | 0:07:45 | 0:07:49 | |
One of the things I wanted to dwell on were the limitations | 0:07:49 | 0:07:54 | |
of language, where things suddenly became inexpressible in language | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
and music seemed the perfect art form to express those ideas. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:03 | |
In the Bach Goldberg Variations, why this piece particularly? | 0:08:03 | 0:08:08 | |
It spoke to me. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:09 | |
The narrator in the novel, Marie, talks about a word in | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
Chinese that brings together joy and sorrow simultaneously and I | 0:08:12 | 0:08:17 | |
felt that often with the Goldberg Variations. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
It's... At once feels so extraordinarily simple some of it | 0:08:22 | 0:08:27 | |
but it never loses this complexity of feeling. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
Bach's Goldberg Variation number 21 gave way to a joyous, | 0:08:32 | 0:08:37 | |
bold and imperious number 22. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:41 | |
Kai played as if he were juggling a dozen silver knives and all | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
the edges flickered and shone. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
"Kai," she thought, "you are as lost as I am. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
"You have no idea where this beauty comes from and you know better | 0:08:50 | 0:08:55 | |
"than to think that such clarity could come from your own heart." | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
You're taking in a very broad sweep of China's history. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
Why did you want to write such a, you could say, such an epic? | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
When I first started writing, I thought I was writing about | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
something I remembered very vividly as a teenager | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
which are the six weeks of protest in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:20 | |
I just remember watching and just kind of being amazed at the courage. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
All these Beijing citizens of every age, from high school students | 0:09:27 | 0:09:30 | |
to the elderly, came into the streets to stop the tanks and I | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
began thinking about the people who were 40, 50, 60 years old. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:39 | |
And so the centre of gravity has shifted to 1966 | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
and the Cultural Revolution, and how, on the surface, | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
there's some interesting echoes. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
Both generations quoted the revolutionary ideology. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
Everyone involved really wanted to make a better, stronger China. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
It's just that the means of doing it led to another China. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
I no longer wish to live with restraints, Teacher. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
I wish to cast off the ordinary. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
The professor has come to fear the Revolution. I do not. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:12 | |
I wish the awakening of our times to awaken me as well. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:17 | |
We shouldn't be afraid of our own voices. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
The time has come to speak what's really in our minds. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
How much would you say that it's a hopeful book? | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
On the one hand, it mourns the cyclical nature of history. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:33 | |
They keep returning to the same catastrophe of wanting | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
the better world | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
and undermining ourselves. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
On the other hand, the ideas never die. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
And I think that's where the hope is and I think that's where | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
Sparrow's music finds its hope... | 0:10:47 | 0:10:49 | |
Is it never lets go of the desire to create. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
Now we come to the third book nominated from rising literary | 0:11:04 | 0:11:08 | |
star David Szalay. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:09 | |
And it's about something I feel vaguely qualified to talk about. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
Being a man. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:17 | |
Although it doesn't paint the prettiest picture of my gender. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
"We're born alone, | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
"we live alone, | 0:11:25 | 0:11:26 | |
"we die alone," | 0:11:26 | 0:11:28 | |
so goes the Orson Welles quote | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
and it pretty much sums up David Szalay's All That Man Is. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:35 | |
The book is a meditation on modern masculinity told through | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
nine men who hop around Europe with such frequency that one wonders if | 0:11:38 | 0:11:42 | |
it could be written in the future after we have crashed into our | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
oncoming hard Brexit. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
I say "book" rather than "novel" because there's a controversial | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
question hanging around this nominee which is, can these nine different | 0:11:50 | 0:11:54 | |
stories of seemingly unrelated men actually be called a novel? | 0:11:54 | 0:11:59 | |
It begins with a young backpacker in Berlin and with each chapter, | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
we're introduced to progressively older men, | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
ending with the retired civil servant in Italy. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:11 | |
The connections are in the men who span the ages of man | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
but not the emotions. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
They are all faithless, disappointed, yearning, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
lost, travelling and alone. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
That's not to say that these characters aren't drawn | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
with affection and humour. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
But it's a pretty bleak prognosis for masculinity, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
and I'm intrigued to meet the author responsible. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:31 | |
-Can we begin by talking about the form of this book? -Yeah. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
Because I think it's a very interesting | 0:12:34 | 0:12:36 | |
and possibly out-on-its-own form. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
Somewhere in between a short story connection and a novel. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
Is that something that you thought about, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:43 | |
or is it something that just evolved as you were writing it? | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
It was from the beginning conceived as a collection of stories, | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
but a collection of stories that would form a single unit. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:52 | |
I mean, I feel very strongly that the book isn't just | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
a collection of stories, that it is a singular work. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
You are correct, it doesn't but it's... It is, I think, | 0:12:57 | 0:13:01 | |
unusual to some extent, and this is a compliment. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:04 | |
It seems to be the same story told again and again | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
about the same man in different stages of his life. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
Would you agree with that? | 0:13:10 | 0:13:12 | |
I would. In fact, I'm very happy to hear you say that | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
because I really wanted there to be a sense that these, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
as you say, varied characters | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
would create a sort of single composite protagonist. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
I mean, I hope it gives that some kind of universality. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
The kid smokes pot. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:29 | |
That's not even a secret any more. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
His smokes it in his room at home. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:33 | |
He still lives with his parents. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
He shows no sign of wanting to leave. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
His meals are made for him. His washing is done. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
And how old is he now? | 0:13:40 | 0:13:41 | |
-21? -22? | 0:13:41 | 0:13:43 | |
Unmanly is the word. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:45 | |
He once tried to have a talk with him. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
He sat him down in a bar with a beer and said, | 0:13:47 | 0:13:51 | |
"You got to grow up." | 0:13:51 | 0:13:52 | |
And the boy just stared at him and said, | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
"What do you mean?" | 0:13:55 | 0:13:56 | |
And in so many words Clovis said, | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
"You're a loser, mate." | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
Their internal kernel of manliness is very similar. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:06 | |
-They're all travelling. -Yeah. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:07 | |
They're all hoping for something better in their travels and | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
they're all, I would say, disappointed. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:11 | |
I mean, sometimes they do achieve what they want to achieve. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
But then it turns out to be not quite what they actually want. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
That never leaves them entirely satisfied. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:18 | |
There's always something else. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:20 | |
I don't know you but there's a sense of which you get the sense of you | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
throughout this book as this particular type of | 0:14:23 | 0:14:25 | |
slightly depressive man. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:27 | |
I hope you don't mind me saying. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
Well... I mean... Yeah. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:31 | |
I'm not actually a depressive person, | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
-and it's my books always come out a bit more depressive... -Right. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
..than I feel that I really am. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
I mean, obviously, writing a book about | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
the unattainability of satisfaction is going to have it's bleak aspects. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:48 | |
He started lately, in the last year or two, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
to have the depressing feeling | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
that he's able to see all the way to the end of his life. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
That he already knows everything that is going to happen. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
That it is all now entirely predictable. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:04 | |
How many more opportunities after this one | 0:15:04 | 0:15:06 | |
will there be to escape that? | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
Not many. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
Maybe none. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:11 | |
We live at a time where Europe has suddenly become this burning issue. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
Is that something that you wanted to write about, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:19 | |
because of that, or is it just part of the book? | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
I wanted to write about travel in Europe and the fluidity of | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
Europe and people moving around Europe because that is | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
happening on an unprecedented scale. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
Now, I finished the book a year before the Brexit referendum | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
so since I've finished the book, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:34 | |
there have been these major developments | 0:15:34 | 0:15:37 | |
which suggest significant political pushback | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
against freedom of movement within Europe. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
So the book may turn out to reflect a kind of high watermark of that. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:49 | |
I hope it doesn't. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:51 | |
Our next book is also set in mainland Europe | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
but tells a very different story. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:58 | |
Deborah Levy's second Man Booker nominated novel, Hot Milk, | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
revolves around a mother and daughter | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
visiting the jellyfish-infested waters of southern Spain. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
Mariella Frostrup took the plunge into Levy's world. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
Like the recurring image of the medusa jellyfish at the heart | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
of Hot Milk, Levy's writing is a thing of beauty, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
but an undercurrent of menace also runs deep in the narrative | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
and delivers an undoubted sting. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:28 | |
Hot Milk centres around 25-year-old Sophia | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
and her wheelchair-bound mother Rose. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:36 | |
The two have decamped to Almeria in southern Spain | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
to attend a clinic in the hope of finding a cure | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
for Rose's mysterious and potentially psychosomatic illness. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:46 | |
The surreal sensory atmosphere and air of imminent threat are haunting. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
Yet, in this sun scorched and economically disadvantaged seascape, | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
Sophia seemed to start finding her feet. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:58 | |
In this follow-up to Levy's previously | 0:17:00 | 0:17:02 | |
Man Booker-nominated novel Swimming Home | 0:17:02 | 0:17:04 | |
she returns to familiar themes of water and exile | 0:17:04 | 0:17:08 | |
as well as psychology, feminism | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
and a particularly complex mother-daughter relationship. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
Deborah, it's no surprise that we're here on the waterfront. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
What is it about that particular element | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
that makes you feel so at home? | 0:17:19 | 0:17:21 | |
-Well, I'd rather be in this water... -I don't think so. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
..than sitting at the side. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
I feel happiest in water. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
I think it's the nearest I have to kind of meditating. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:34 | |
Well, I can see it as a therapeutic element for you, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
but what about for your heroines and anti-heroines? | 0:17:37 | 0:17:39 | |
Because here we have Sophia in Hot Milk | 0:17:39 | 0:17:43 | |
who spends her time in the ocean | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
despite the epidemic of medusa jellyfish. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:49 | |
I wanted to have a female character who is 25, | 0:17:49 | 0:17:53 | |
who feels lost in her life. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
She feels small, she doesn't know where she's heading. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
When she goes into the sea and she gets stung by the jellyfish, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:04 | |
it's as if those stings are helping her become less passive. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:10 | |
So they're a good thing. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
The water became clearer and cleaner the further I swum out. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:21 | |
I am far away from shore but not lost enough. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
I must return home, but I have nowhere to go that is my own. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
No work, no money, no lover to welcome me back. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
When I flipped over, I saw them in the water. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
The medusas. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:41 | |
Slow and calm, delicate and dangerous. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
The toxic relationship between Sophia and her mother Rose | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
is really at the heart of this book. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:53 | |
Why did you want to tackle the very thorny relationship | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
between mothers and daughters? | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
I wanted to initially look at hypochondria. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
How Rose uses her illness, her apparent illness | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
to control and manipulate and to gather love and attention to her. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
Then Sophia has an interest in her mother's symptoms | 0:19:13 | 0:19:17 | |
and, in a way, that's her downfall. | 0:19:17 | 0:19:18 | |
"What's wrong with mum? What is her body trying to say?" | 0:19:18 | 0:19:23 | |
My own investigation has been in progress | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
for about 20 of my 25 years. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
Perhaps longer. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:33 | |
When I was four, I asked her what a headache meant. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
She told me it was like a door slamming in her head. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:43 | |
I have become a good mind-reader | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
which means her head is my head. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
There are plenty of doors slamming all the time. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
And I and the main witness. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
It's a strange relationship, isn't it? | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
-Because it is also extremely loving. -Loving, yes, absolutely. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:04 | |
So it's never one thing or the other. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
My point, in Hot Milk, in this relationship, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
is love is difficult and that's what makes it interesting | 0:20:10 | 0:20:12 | |
and that's why...that's always the best position to write from. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:17 | |
The next shortlisted novel comes from | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
African-American writer Paul Beatty. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
This tale of modern slavery is a shockingly funny slice of satire. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:37 | |
Or so the cover tells us. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:39 | |
But long-time fan of the author, George the Poet, | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
wonders whether readers should laugh...or cry. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:46 | |
When I was 12, I read a book called The White Boy Shuffle. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
I had no context other than the blurb. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
The story followed a protagonist move into the ghetto | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
as a black kid coming from the 'burbs. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
He reminded me of so many people I knew. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
So much so I couldn't even tell them apart. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
And I was intrigued. | 0:21:06 | 0:21:07 | |
How could I find so much of my life in American art? | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
The answer is the author's unflinching gaze, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
I'm convinced the lynching days were just a phase. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
Refusing to accept the illusion of progress, | 0:21:19 | 0:21:21 | |
searching for the truth no matter how confusing the process. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:25 | |
See, Britain, like America, often struggles with its difficult past. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:33 | |
Leaving millions of kids like me to deal | 0:21:33 | 0:21:35 | |
with each racist political charge. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
Humour is Paul Beatty's weapon of choice. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:42 | |
It's his way of cutting through the deafening noise of race wars | 0:21:42 | 0:21:45 | |
and class wars and race wars disguised as class wars | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
establishing a definite voice. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
The Sellout is a powerful novel. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
It's story about a modern-day slave | 0:21:55 | 0:21:57 | |
has seen it hailed as a great work of satire. | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
But, to me, this account of contemporary black America | 0:22:01 | 0:22:03 | |
felt more literal | 0:22:03 | 0:22:04 | |
and I'm intrigued to find out what Beatty's intentions were. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
I took this quite literally | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
but I found that a lot of commentary around your new book | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
is describing it as a satire. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
-Yeah. -Is this an accurate term? | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
One of the first readings I did for the book... | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
A friend of a friend came up and said, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:22 | |
"This isn't satire. This is reportage." | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
I don't think of it as satire. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:26 | |
I just think of it... It's just what I wrote, you know. | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
And somebody the other day asked me about... | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
if I thought the book was funny | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
and I was, like, "Yes, some days I do, some days I don't." | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
But I don't think that makes the book any less evocative, hopefully. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:39 | |
That's the bitch of it, to be on trial for my life | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
and for the first time ever not feel guilty. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
That omnipresent guilt that's as black as fast food apple pie | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
and prison basketball has finally gone. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:54 | |
I'm no longer party to that collective guilt that keeps | 0:22:54 | 0:22:57 | |
the administrative secretary, the stock clerk, | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
the "not really all that attractive but she's black" beauty pageant | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
winner from showing up for work Monday morning | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
-and shooting every white -BLEEP -in the place. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
What do you find real in the book? I'm just really curious. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:12 | |
You talk about not being allowed to experience blackness | 0:23:12 | 0:23:17 | |
outside of the prescribed norm. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
That's something that really resonated with me. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
It's interesting to hear you talk about what feels real to you | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
about the book. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:26 | |
You know, cos I think the perceptions in there are very real. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
I mean, the book is a discussion about have things changed | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
or how haven't they changed. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:34 | |
I don't have an answer to that, you know. | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
And, I think, for him, he's, like, | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
"Yeah, shit's changed but shit's exactly the same..." | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
You know, "..for so many people." | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
-Hands up. -CROWD: -Don't shoot. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:47 | |
I don't feel responsible any more. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
is when we've actually done something wrong. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
Because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
of being black and innocent. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
And, in a way, the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
In the way that voting Republican is a relief, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
marrying white is a relief, albeit a temporary one. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
Are you conscience of the kind of conversations | 0:24:10 | 0:24:12 | |
that might start over here? | 0:24:12 | 0:24:13 | |
-I have no idea. To be honest, you know. -Interesting. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
I hope it starts something. I don't know what necessarily. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
Something positive, hopefully. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:21 | |
Well, I look forward to the conversations that's going to start. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
-George, thank you, man. -Pleasure was all mine, Paul. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
Thank you very much for your time. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
Our final book this evening is His Bloody Project | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
by Graeme Macrae Burnet. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
A historical crime novel investigating | 0:24:37 | 0:24:40 | |
gruesome murders in the Highlands. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
And it caught the attention of Queen of Scottish crime writing, | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
Val McDermid. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:47 | |
My name is Roderick John Macrae. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
I was born in 1852 and have lived all my days | 0:24:54 | 0:24:58 | |
in the village of Culduie in Ross-shire. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:00 | |
It's 1869 and a triple murder has been committed. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
A man, a 15-year-old girl | 0:25:08 | 0:25:10 | |
and a three-year-old child have been brutally slaughtered in their home. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:14 | |
The close-knit rural crofting community are in shock. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
But the biggest mystery is why a previously mild-mannered | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
Roderick Macrae would commit such a bloodthirsty atrocity. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
There was a wee bit of a buzz in Scottish crime writing circles | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
about His Bloody Project when it first came out, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
and so I'd read it before it got onto the Booker longlist | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
and I was delighted as well as surprised | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
to find it on the shortlist. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:36 | |
It has been described as a crime novel and I think that's a lazy | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
categorisation but I understand why people have gone down that road. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
Yes, this book has a murder in it but it's also a literary novel. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
It intentionally and playfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, | 0:25:46 | 0:25:50 | |
between meticulous research and fantasy | 0:25:50 | 0:25:52 | |
and it's up to you, as the reader, to decide where you stand. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
This is only Graeme Macrae Burnet's second novel and it's been | 0:25:59 | 0:26:01 | |
published by small Scottish independent publisher Sarabande. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
I'm meeting him in Glasgow's Mitchell library | 0:26:05 | 0:26:07 | |
where Graeme spent 2015 researching and writing the novel | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
that could turn him from a virtually unknown author | 0:26:11 | 0:26:13 | |
to winner of the world's biggest literary awards. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
One of the things that's been making the headlines about this book | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
making the shortlist is that it's been sort of immediately | 0:26:20 | 0:26:22 | |
-slotted by the lazy critics as, "It's a crime novel." -Yes. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
Did you think of it as a crime novel when you were writing it? | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
I think these categorisations aren't important when you're writing. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:31 | |
You're just set out to write the book you're writing and | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
people say, "Oh, it's a crime novel" or "Oh, it's not a crime novel." | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
I call it a novel about a crime and my objective is I want | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
the reader to be engaged with the characters. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
I want them, no matter what dark things Roddy Macrae does... | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
I want them to root for Roddy. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
You know, and I want them to feel the pain of what he goes through. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:52 | |
I shall begin by saying that I carried out these acts | 0:26:52 | 0:26:55 | |
with the sole purpose of delivering my father from | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
the tribulations he has lately suffered. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
Because of these tribulations was our neighbour Lachlan McKenzie | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
and it was for the betterment of my family's lot | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
that I've removed him from this world. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
I did various parts of the research here in the Mitchell. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:14 | |
We've got these lovely maps here in the library | 0:27:14 | 0:27:16 | |
and these go back through various 19th-century manifestations | 0:27:16 | 0:27:19 | |
so you can actually pinpoint the cottages and stuff | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
in each individual village. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:23 | |
-You can literary follow Roddy's footsteps. -Yeah, absolutely. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
-And that really grounds it in that sense of reality. -Absolutely. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
And we've also got these amazing photographs from the period. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
You see these old houses with no windows. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
There's nothing romantic about this croft house. It's slum housing. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
And it debunks that kind of sentimental history | 0:27:40 | 0:27:43 | |
we have absorbed, I think, here in Scotland. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:46 | |
It was a Victorian invention. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:48 | |
The idyll of the Highlands as a sort of peaceful wilderness | 0:27:48 | 0:27:53 | |
but we know that the history of the Highlands | 0:27:53 | 0:27:55 | |
is very dark and quite bloody at times. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:59 | |
My objective was not merely | 0:27:59 | 0:28:00 | |
to remove Lachlan Broad from this world. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
Rather at the moment of his death it was necessary that | 0:28:03 | 0:28:07 | |
he was cognisant of the fact that it was I, Roderick Macrae, | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
that was ending his life. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:13 | |
One of the interesting things about your book is that you have | 0:28:15 | 0:28:18 | |
not been published by a big mainstream publisher. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:21 | |
How has that been for you now that | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
you've hit the headlines with the shortlist? | 0:28:23 | 0:28:25 | |
Before I was somewhere around 300,000 in Amazon. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:29 | |
By the end of the day, when we were longlisted, we had hit number nine | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
in the Amazon general chart so, I mean, it's a complete transformation | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
for my fortunes and the fortunes of the book. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:39 | |
And that brings us to the end of our round-up of this year's nominees. | 0:28:42 | 0:28:47 | |
Six novels all vying to take their place in Man Booker history, | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
and I genuinely cannot call it this year. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
But I would advise you to dip into at least two or three of these books | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
because they are all authors who are experimenting with the form, | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
who are pushing the boundaries of what a novel can be | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
which is what this prize should always be rewarding. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:05 |