:00:18. > :00:22.On the review show tonight, the six books shortlisted for this year's
:00:22. > :00:27.Man Booker Prize. Hilary Mantel returns to the court of Henry VII
:00:27. > :00:31.in Bring Up The Bodies. Will Self span as fragmented century of
:00:31. > :00:36.modernism in Umbrella. A family adrift in the south of France in
:00:36. > :00:42.Deborah Levy's Swimming Home. A journey to oblivion in Germany in
:00:42. > :00:50.Alison Moore's The Lighthouse. Dreams and depraf vee in the opium
:00:50. > :00:53.dens of Bombay in Narcopolis. And post-war Malaya in Tan Twan Eng's
:00:53. > :00:59.The Garden Of Evening Mists. Joining me tonight to run through
:00:59. > :01:03.the six books on the shortlist are John Mullan Professor of English
:01:03. > :01:12.literature at university of London, Rosie Boycott and novelist Peter
:01:12. > :01:17.Kendall. All three of whom have judged eminent -- AL Kennedy, all
:01:17. > :01:22.three have judged eminent book. Bring Up The Bodies is the sequel
:01:22. > :01:28.for Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, she won the Booker in 2009. If she wins
:01:28. > :01:32.again she will be the first British winner to pull off the double. Will
:01:32. > :01:37.Self has never been nominated before, and with his most
:01:37. > :01:40.uncompromising novel so far he's up with avenge begins. Umbrella spans
:01:40. > :01:45.much of the 20th century, constantly shifting time and place,
:01:45. > :01:49.and pushing at the boundaries of literary form and narrative. At the
:01:49. > :01:54.heart are two characters, the unfamiliar Audrey Death, in a
:01:54. > :01:58.catatonic state for 50 years, and her psychiatrists, Zack Busner,
:01:58. > :02:05.whom regular Will Self readers might recognise. In the past he has
:02:05. > :02:09.been a hierophantic character, a symbolic character, an outline I
:02:09. > :02:15.have scrubbed down like transfer on to books. This time we go inside
:02:15. > :02:21.him. A lot of the critical writing surrounding Umbrella has focused on
:02:21. > :02:28.formallist questions, and said it is a tribute or homage to Joyce and
:02:28. > :02:34.Ulysses and Virginia Woolf and the high modernist, and it has all this
:02:34. > :02:43.clever inter-textual, and Audrey Death falls into a coma at 1922,
:02:43. > :02:47.when Ulysses was published, she mis -- missed out on modernism. That is
:02:47. > :02:51.all there, but that is not why I chose to write in a stream of
:02:51. > :03:01.consciousness and stream of present. I think books are very much like
:03:01. > :03:02.
:03:02. > :03:06.children, you are insemated by the muse, you gestate the book for
:03:06. > :03:10.almost nine months, for me, then you give birth, which is the act of
:03:10. > :03:14.writing it, if all things go well you drive it up to university and
:03:14. > :03:16.buy it an electric kettle and get a bank account for it, then it is on
:03:16. > :03:22.its own. Bring Up The Bodies continues the story of Thomas
:03:22. > :03:25.Cromwell and his involvement in the complicated dynastic love life of
:03:25. > :03:30.Henry VII. We spoke to Hilary Mantel earlier in the year.
:03:30. > :03:34.How do we see the character of Thomas Cromwell evolve, do you
:03:34. > :03:40.think, between Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies? There is a small gap.
:03:41. > :03:45.We leave Wolf Hall July 1535, the evening of Thomas Moore's execution,
:03:45. > :03:53.we resume in September, when the thing is on progress, and the royal
:03:53. > :03:57.party is actually at Wolf Hall. What changes at Wolf Hall is that
:03:57. > :04:01.Thomas Cromwell realises that the king has fallen in love with the
:04:01. > :04:08.daughter of the house, Jane Seymour. Why do you think, in general,
:04:08. > :04:13.people are so drawn to this period? It's the repositry of all stories
:04:13. > :04:23.all theme, all archetypes, I think it touches on our collective
:04:23. > :04:23.
:04:23. > :04:27.processes. Henry is Bluebeard, the wife is victim, Cromwell is a
:04:27. > :04:32.trickster figure. It is straight from fairytale, and yet it is real.
:04:32. > :04:37.It was enacted, not just in sexual politics, but actual politics.
:04:37. > :04:42.There is a third book in the trilogy. Are you clear now, in your
:04:42. > :04:48.own mind, how that is going to develop? It can only end one way,
:04:48. > :04:54.unfortunately. We know the history. Yes, I often end my books with
:04:54. > :04:58.beheadings, readers will have noticed.
:04:59. > :05:02."a woman pushes through the crowd at the gate, grabbing at the bridle
:05:02. > :05:08.of his horse. Before the guards push her away, she shouts at him
:05:08. > :05:16."God help us, Cromwell, what a man the king is. How many wives does he
:05:16. > :05:21.mean to have?" "As was just said, we know the story, but why is this
:05:21. > :05:25.not an issue, or is it an issue? is not an issue at all. It is a
:05:25. > :05:30.stunning book this, it is a much better book, I think, than Wolf
:05:30. > :05:34.Hall. You felt some of the history was layered on a bit. By the time
:05:34. > :05:39.you get to Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel is wearing this story
:05:39. > :05:43.and these lives. She's inhabiting it so completely, that she really
:05:43. > :05:46.makes it into the present. Which is why you know the end doesn't matter.
:05:46. > :05:51.It becomes a thrilling journey. There is so many things about the
:05:51. > :05:56.book that is extraordinary, one is the character of Thomas Cromwell,
:05:56. > :05:59.who he is now a Mafia boss, a controller, a lover, a deceitful
:05:59. > :06:03.person, also kind to his own, who you know also has this incredible
:06:03. > :06:07.end ahead of him. Then you have the character of Henry, they spar
:06:07. > :06:10.together throughout the book. And the interrogation, as you come
:06:10. > :06:15.towards the end of it, is extraordinary, it is completely
:06:16. > :06:20.chilling. At one point the line comes up, "I'm going to be punished
:06:20. > :06:25.for my thought, even my thoughts can be criminal". You feel you
:06:25. > :06:29.would be in Guantanamo, you are in the present day. I think it is an
:06:29. > :06:34.extraordinary achievement. I didn't expect to like it as much, actually,
:06:34. > :06:40.from the moment you pick it up, from the first paragraph, which is
:06:40. > :06:45.about Cromwell out hunting with his hawks and he's calling out the
:06:45. > :06:50.names of his dead children. You are captivated by it. Alison, were you
:06:50. > :06:53.as captivated? I wasn't captivated at all really. There were things I
:06:53. > :06:56.liked in the political element, the dealing of torture, and the
:06:56. > :07:00.retrospective rewriting of history was interesting and acute. For me
:07:00. > :07:04.it was leaning on what I already know about Cromwell, and what I
:07:05. > :07:10.already know about Henry. The tone of it, I don't know, bits of it
:07:10. > :07:15.just sounded like Thor in the Avengers, the one who isn't cool.
:07:16. > :07:22.The strange mannered style, occasionally things, people saying
:07:22. > :07:28.something is "dead meat" and "you had to be there", it doesn't sound
:07:28. > :07:33.if you had dor to me. I didn't feel e-- Tudor to me. I didn't feel
:07:33. > :07:38.drawn into it. Anne Boleyn was a strong character, but it was almost
:07:38. > :07:44.as if Mantel wanted it to be Anne's book and she wasn't gelling with
:07:45. > :07:49.the men. A lot of the drama happens off, a lot of Henry's drama happens
:07:49. > :07:52.off-screen. Not in a way that is threatening. It is just absent.
:07:52. > :07:58.People are narrating very dramatic things that happened at some other
:07:58. > :08:05.point that I thought was a problem. It sounds if you were a judge in
:08:05. > :08:09.2009, John Mullan you were a judge. Is it a worthy sequence, second
:08:09. > :08:15.novel syndrome, is that what you think? I have a casting vote, and I
:08:15. > :08:19.cast it with Rosie. I'm surprised at what Alison says, I think it is
:08:19. > :08:23.a worthy sequel. It is a tighter, slightly more rapid book.
:08:23. > :08:29.Compressed time? It is more compressed. I loved the first book
:08:29. > :08:33.as well. I was one of the judges that voted for it t I'm delighted
:08:33. > :08:38.it won. And I think the little retrospect we have got those that
:08:38. > :08:41.Hilary Mantel is somebody who has pleased all sort of reader. I think
:08:41. > :08:45.the extraordinary thing is, we were talking earlier about whether it
:08:45. > :08:50.mattered that this is such a well known story. And the extraordinary
:08:50. > :08:56.thing is, that what she manages to do, it is all written in the
:08:56. > :08:59.present tense, we will talk about other novels written in the present
:08:59. > :09:02.tense. She manages to unstitch history, it is seen through
:09:02. > :09:06.Cromwell's point of view. He doesn't know what is going to
:09:06. > :09:11.happen. He is dangerously manoeuvring, most dangerous when
:09:11. > :09:20.most confident, you feel. She makes what we now know, as if it is a
:09:20. > :09:23.template, absolutely set in stone, seem contingent, random, risky, and
:09:23. > :09:29.constantly surprising. I don't know of any other historical novelist,
:09:29. > :09:33.certainly none alive, that manage to do that. I have to stop you
:09:33. > :09:37.there. You mentioned the present tense, we should move to a novel
:09:37. > :09:42.where there is a continuous stream of consciousness, that is one way
:09:42. > :09:48.of decribing it. This is Umbrella. We will hear an extract where the
:09:48. > :09:52.psychiatrist, Busner, for the first time encounters Audrey Death, who
:09:52. > :10:01.has been in a psychiatric hospital for 50 years.
:10:01. > :10:07."Along comes Zachary, he wonders, am I blurring, Ashwushushwa, she
:10:07. > :10:14.slurs, what is that? Ashuwa-ashuwa, one of her bright eyes leers at the
:10:14. > :10:17.floor. She asks is it my shoes, my Hush Puppies. Her eye films with
:10:17. > :10:23.disappointment, then clears and leers pointedly at the floor win
:10:23. > :10:27.again. She's drooling, spit pools at the point of her cheekbone, and
:10:27. > :10:32.stretches unbroken, to where it doodles on the tile, with a nail's
:10:32. > :10:37.silvering. ". We get the multiplicity of
:10:37. > :10:43.voices from that reading. How is it on the page? I think it is a bit
:10:43. > :10:48.more difficult on the page. Will Self does what the reader has to do
:10:48. > :10:52.is find accents and intone nations. The page is an extraordinary thing,
:10:52. > :10:55.it is actually no paragraph, no break, no indication as to the
:10:55. > :11:00.difference between speech and thought, and narration. It is quite
:11:00. > :11:04.a sort of demanding thing. The reader has to put in all those
:11:04. > :11:09.division. He has made it a very demanding book, page by page, to
:11:09. > :11:13.read, you have to make of it the kind of axe Septembers he has just
:11:13. > :11:19.given us. At the same time there are narrative structures, we had
:11:19. > :11:23.this amazing dissolving of time, from one into another, does it feel
:11:23. > :11:27.nostalgic for a modernist lost past or some how progressive? I don't
:11:27. > :11:32.know the answer to that, there is a statement right at the beginning,
:11:32. > :11:36.saying this is a story that could only be told in this form. It
:11:36. > :11:40.seemed a grandiose thing to say, it is an amazingly good story, the
:11:40. > :11:47.story is well known, these people fall into this coma, they get
:11:47. > :11:52.brought back, it is the story that is in the Wakenings. It isle well
:11:52. > :11:57.known and could be told in lots of ways. This puzzled me. It took me a
:11:57. > :12:02.long time to get into this book. I would find, as John was decribing
:12:02. > :12:06.the pages with different things in it, suddenly if you saw a
:12:06. > :12:10.consecutive 200 words of narrative you would leap at it, and you would
:12:10. > :12:15.be, like now I know where I am, and then off somewhere else. You change
:12:15. > :12:23.40, 50 years in the course of a sentence. It is extremely easy to
:12:23. > :12:26.get lost. I found, a consequence, it was difficult to form any
:12:26. > :12:31.emotional attachment to any of the protaganists of the book. You would
:12:31. > :12:36.get close and then they are off. Will Self is never good at
:12:36. > :12:41.sympathetic characters by his own admission? This one is, it takes
:12:41. > :12:46.you 20 pages to get into what he's doing. If you lie back and let him
:12:46. > :12:51.do it to you, it is passionate and socially engaged and angry. There
:12:51. > :12:56.are enormously dense moments of huge pathos. Beautiful, equisite
:12:56. > :13:01.bits of humour, wonderful dialogue. The only way he could get away with
:13:01. > :13:05.what he is doing, it is a huge stream of consciousness. It is the
:13:05. > :13:12.correct form for that book to be, whether you could talk about it
:13:12. > :13:17.technically or not. It is the book it should be. Why do you say that.
:13:17. > :13:21.Psychosis, loss of consciousness? You have people jumping in and out
:13:21. > :13:25.of time, people losing huge numbers of years, within it was a thread
:13:25. > :13:28.running through, where you have the sense everybody could be, in some
:13:28. > :13:34.way, connected. This sense if you had an awareness of the pain that
:13:34. > :13:38.is out there and the damage is out there, it would form this
:13:38. > :13:44.collective unconsciousness insanity. Or that was the way it was working
:13:44. > :13:48.for me. It certainly, because he can do different points of view,
:13:48. > :13:53.absolutely convincingly, because I can do different voice absolutely
:13:53. > :13:57.convincing lo. The little clear -- convincingly. The little gear
:13:57. > :14:00.change, you would have to go back maybe a sentence, you know who
:14:00. > :14:04.everyone is and where they are, because of the quality of the
:14:04. > :14:08.writing. It will throw things in, people going to or from charity
:14:08. > :14:13.shops, that is all you need about the way they took, that is all you
:14:13. > :14:16.need to know. It is gorgeous writing. I wasn't a big fan of Will
:14:16. > :14:20.Self, sometimes I thought he was doing technical things for the hell
:14:20. > :14:25.of it. This I feel his heart is in it. He has decided to do something
:14:25. > :14:30.crazy, because it is about crazy people, either crazy medically, or
:14:30. > :14:34.because they are in intolerable situations. The stuff about the
:14:34. > :14:37.First World War is heart-breaking, beautiful, and done very densely
:14:37. > :14:43.and deftly. If you are looking at the time scale and cast he's
:14:43. > :14:48.running over, it is wonderful. It is the reverse of the man that
:14:48. > :14:54.doesn't feel like a historical book that isn't. That is a beautifully-
:14:54. > :15:00.done stream of consciousness. Will Self and Hilary Mantel are
:15:00. > :15:07.published by big houses, Fourth Estate to name it. The next from
:15:08. > :15:14.independents, Swimming Home, and The Lighthouse is published by Salt.
:15:14. > :15:20.In The Lighthouse, we neat Futh, strangely bemused by his latest
:15:20. > :15:24.mart tell separation, and thinking about his mother's leaving him when
:15:24. > :15:29.he was young. His mother left when he was 12, we see the man he is now,
:15:29. > :15:36.childlike and immature. Tensions heightened when Futh settles into a
:15:36. > :15:41.hotel, called Hell House, run by a creepingly frustrated couple,
:15:41. > :15:45.Bernard and Ester. She wants his attention, and she doesn't get it,
:15:45. > :15:51.so she provokes him, bad attention is better than none. Between them
:15:51. > :15:54.they are creating a situation in the hotel, which is going to be a
:15:54. > :15:58.volatile situation for Futh to walk back into, at the end of the week.
:15:58. > :16:04.Swimming Home is the story of two troubled British couples in the
:16:04. > :16:11.south of France. Whose holiday is interrupted by the arrival of a
:16:11. > :16:19.stranger. Kitty Finch is fiercely clever, she's fragile, according to
:16:19. > :16:24.some characters they would call her unhinged. She appears to be
:16:24. > :16:32.something different to every single character. When she's first
:16:32. > :16:38.discovered in the swimming pool, in the Villa grounds. Swimming Home is
:16:38. > :16:46.probably my most tightly-plotted novel. It is set chronologically
:16:46. > :16:52.over five days. But, there is a little rupture in its narrative
:16:52. > :16:57.design, which is is that I start with a glimpse of the near future,
:16:57. > :17:01.and that's with Kitty Finch, and Joe in the car together.
:17:01. > :17:06.Managers could have been so intimate with Kitty Finch had been
:17:07. > :17:11.a pleasure, a pain, an experiment. But most of all it had been a
:17:11. > :17:18.mistake. He asked her again to, please, please drive him safely
:17:18. > :17:23.home, to his wife and daughter. Yes, she said, life is only worth living
:17:23. > :17:30.because we hope it will get better, and we will all get home safely."
:17:30. > :17:37.What I have my eye on when I was mapping Swimming Home, is how to
:17:37. > :17:41.give the reader just the tiniest glimpse glimpse of something that
:17:41. > :17:47.will happen, in the -- tiniest glimpse of something that will
:17:47. > :17:56.happen in the near future, and how to make the past intrude, very
:17:56. > :18:00.gently, on the every day of the sunny present. Does the past
:18:01. > :18:06.successfully and mysteriously manage to intrude, or does it fall
:18:06. > :18:09.into a dysfuntional middle-class family on holiday? It is a
:18:09. > :18:14.dysfuntional middle-class family on holiday you know, you kind of know
:18:14. > :18:19.from the cover what is going to happen. You absolutely know from
:18:19. > :18:24.that little introduction, when she talks about Kitty Finch and Joe,
:18:24. > :18:29.the protaganist. He's the poet. Then you know the moment you are at
:18:29. > :18:32.the swimming pool, that swimming pool, somebody will be in that
:18:32. > :18:36.swimming pool, and they are not swimming, and it will happen before
:18:37. > :18:40.too long. There is hundreds of books that are sat with families in
:18:40. > :18:45.Tuscany or the south of France, they are having a terrible time,
:18:45. > :18:49.everyone is drinking too much and there is too much sup. Variations
:18:49. > :18:54.on this theme happen, generally it is a middle-aged man who ends up
:18:54. > :18:59.having frantic sex with a very young pretty woman. I didn't think
:18:59. > :19:04.this book took that model any further. He's a poet in exile, very
:19:04. > :19:08.issues and demon, does it take the book further? Judging from Alison's
:19:08. > :19:14.body language, I will be a maverick on this. I thought it was terrific,
:19:14. > :19:17.actually, I thought the fact it was a set-up you thought you knew, it
:19:17. > :19:23.was being used, not repeated, really cleverly. The author, you
:19:23. > :19:28.heard her there, it is a book for those who enjoy an "I do", a sense
:19:28. > :19:33.of real design and a little bit of trickery with our expectation. I
:19:33. > :19:37.will say one thing did brilliantly, that was part of the design. It
:19:37. > :19:41.shifts around view points, a lot. The different characters?
:19:41. > :19:44.different characters, just let me say, just let me say, and it does
:19:45. > :19:49.so for the opposite reason that novelists usually do, including at
:19:49. > :19:54.least one of the other novelists we have to talk about here. Which is,
:19:54. > :19:57.she's constantly giving you the sense of how characters don't
:19:57. > :20:04.understand each other. I'm telling you what they think. She doesn't
:20:04. > :20:08.just do that, she does it to create this kind of drama where it is all
:20:08. > :20:13.about you trying to guess people's motivations. Why has the wife
:20:14. > :20:21.invited the firl in, is she trying to get -- girl in, is she trying to
:20:21. > :20:25.get her to seduce her husband, to go into with her, to produce
:20:25. > :20:31.another catastrophe. I thought it was immensely clever and I'm
:20:31. > :20:34.looking forward to re-reading it. What is my body language, not
:20:34. > :20:39.liking middle-class people on holiday. I was mystified because
:20:39. > :20:47.the individual observations can be very funny and acute observations
:20:47. > :20:51.with writers, and poets using it like electricity. The way bad
:20:51. > :20:56.marriages operate, destroying each other while pretending to have each
:20:56. > :20:59.other's best interests at heart. I won't talk about the ending, it was
:20:59. > :21:05.a remarkable surprise. There is another ending which I didn't
:21:05. > :21:09.believe even more. It was mystifying. It is obviously that
:21:09. > :21:17.she is a great observer of people, but the fabric of the novel didn't
:21:17. > :21:20.hold enough for me. Thanks for keeping the mystery, as well as
:21:20. > :21:26.being a mystery. There is this hapless character, Futh, we are
:21:26. > :21:30.going to see him, here he is trying to work out how to communicate or
:21:30. > :21:35.flirt with someone at a neighbouring table.
:21:35. > :21:40."at the table next to his, an attractive young women is sitting
:21:41. > :21:46.alone. It occurs that at the first trip to Germany, his father would
:21:46. > :21:50.have been the same age as him now. Futh can't imagine his newly-single
:21:50. > :21:54.father, he can't imagine himself in a bar or passing, starting up a
:21:54. > :21:59.conversation with a strange woman, which would lead to his taking her
:21:59. > :22:05.back to his hotel room. What had his father said, my son's asleep in
:22:05. > :22:09.the bedroom but use the bathroom. Futh imagined a conversation
:22:09. > :22:13.between the woman at the next table, how does a conversation move from
:22:13. > :22:17.hello to the hotel bathroom. there a danger in such an
:22:17. > :22:23.inexpressed character as Futh that the novel feels empty, or in a
:22:23. > :22:28.profound way? He is not empty in a deliberately, thought about, and
:22:28. > :22:34.contrived way. I think the whole point of the My Booky Wooker, part
:22:34. > :22:39.-- the booker, is to attract you to novels you wouldn't come across
:22:39. > :22:46.before. I wouldn't had have read this book if it wasn't on the
:22:46. > :22:50.shortlist, I'm so glad I did. She's a talented writer for a novel. It
:22:50. > :22:56.is loom too much. She makes two plots that come together at the
:22:56. > :23:01.beginning and the end, they are interveefed with a very strong
:23:01. > :23:05.sense -- interleefd with a very strong sense of purpose. I didn't
:23:05. > :23:10.know what was going on. I'm easily surprised. You thought it was more
:23:10. > :23:17.telegraph? I could see the train coming from page one. I could smell
:23:17. > :23:22.the smoke, not to give a plot point away. It is a fine first novel, but
:23:22. > :23:27.if you are going to draw attention to a fine first novel, draw
:23:27. > :23:32.attention to Joanna Cavanagh, or Jenny Fagan, there are other people
:23:32. > :23:37.out there. There are always nice intellectual reasons for not giving
:23:37. > :23:41.your characters emotion, if you are feeling nervous about doing a first
:23:41. > :23:49.novel, this is a very absent character in an uncontrolled way,
:23:49. > :23:58.and quite a slim plot. There is this terrible, leaning on these
:23:58. > :24:02.metaphors and sim lays, I get that the -- simile, I get the lighthouse
:24:02. > :24:07.is a phallic shape, and is a penis shape, and it is a warm dome that
:24:07. > :24:15.the man is stroking, and he is taking it out of his trousers. I
:24:15. > :24:19.get it, I got it. The on coming storm is an on coming store.
:24:19. > :24:26.think you are being hard on it. I read it a few week ago, it stayed
:24:26. > :24:30.with me in a very strange way about this inalterably sad character. She
:24:30. > :24:34.really gives this appalling legacy of his childhood, his mother
:24:34. > :24:38.walking out, all these things, this man is essentially hopeless. I
:24:38. > :24:48.don't think I have ever met quite such a hopeless, sad character. I
:24:48. > :24:52.think she actually writes very, very well. Her sentences are very
:24:52. > :24:59.pared down, it is too circular and neat, life needs rags, but it has a
:24:59. > :25:05.lot going for it. It is good on smells. She is not doing enough,
:25:05. > :25:11.obviously she is a poet, it sometimes breaks through and comes
:25:11. > :25:15.on. Jo consider what you said earlier, the great -- Consider the
:25:15. > :25:19.smell stuff, it is how memories are linked to the present. It is
:25:19. > :25:24.because she's making that rather than the complaint earlier.
:25:24. > :25:29.suddenly transfares it to Ester for a one-off, for no reason, it is a
:25:29. > :25:35.peculiar one that doesn't sit with her character, and it doesn't have
:25:35. > :25:42.an end. It hasn't decided how it will finish it just stops. It does
:25:42. > :25:47.decide, you have to be fair. You can figure out what happens in the
:25:47. > :25:51.end. When he saw the train coming, that is the end, in metaphorical
:25:51. > :25:54.terms. We have to end the discussion emphatically. The last
:25:54. > :25:58.two novels selected for the shortlist are set in different
:25:58. > :26:03.parts of Asia. Five years ago Tan Twan Eng was long listed for his
:26:03. > :26:10.debut the Gift of Rain. He has followed that with The Garden Of
:26:10. > :26:17.Evening Mists. Joining him is Indian-born poet and musician, Jeet
:26:17. > :26:22.Thayil, who is in the running with a debut novel. Narcopolis is set in
:26:22. > :26:26.opium dens of 1910. It is an underworld which Thayil has
:26:27. > :26:31.firsthand experience. I was in that world for many, many years. I
:26:31. > :26:41.didn't think I would ever come out of it. One way to bear it is to
:26:41. > :26:46.think of it as a form of embedded research. To use a trendy,
:26:46. > :26:52.modernistic phrase." It wasn't much of a street, it was narrow and
:26:52. > :26:57.congested, there was an endless stream of trucks and hand carts and
:26:57. > :27:03.bicycle, it went from Bombay road to Bombay Central. To talk along it
:27:03. > :27:09.was to tour the city's fleshiest parts, the long rooms of sex, in
:27:10. > :27:16.the midst of it, Rashid's opium room was beginning a local landmark.
:27:16. > :27:20.Trained staff, genuine opium pipes, credit if you are good for it, best
:27:20. > :27:23.quality all." People that I knew at that time
:27:23. > :27:32.were doing drugs, it was the only alternative the world offered them
:27:32. > :27:36.for a better life. Without it, their lives would have been
:27:36. > :27:40.entirely bereft of anything approaching beauty, comfort or love.
:27:40. > :27:44.The Garden Of Evening Mists is set in Malaya, in the years following
:27:44. > :27:49.World War II. Teoh Yun Ling is the sole survivor
:27:49. > :27:56.of a Japanese world camp, and haunted by her experiences there,
:27:56. > :28:02.she is fascinated by the art of Japanese garden design. She becomes
:28:02. > :28:08.an apprentice to the former gardener to the Emperor Hirohito,
:28:08. > :28:12.as a memorial to her sister, who died in the court. "the garden has
:28:12. > :28:17.to change your heart, saddened, uplifted. It has to make you
:28:17. > :28:24.appreciate the impermanence of serving in life. That point in time,
:28:24. > :28:34.just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is
:28:34. > :28:35.
:28:35. > :28:43.about to fall. That moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful
:28:43. > :28:47.about life. The" These are two characters with a lot to learn,
:28:47. > :28:52.they are circling not revealing their past. There is a lot of
:28:52. > :28:56.hiding and deceit going on there. It ties in with one of the
:28:56. > :29:00.principles of gardening, which is borrowed scenery, you borrow
:29:00. > :29:03.something from outside, you make the artificial or distant part of
:29:03. > :29:10.the environment. It is deception, basically, for me.
:29:10. > :29:16.Years later, and now very ill, Teoh Yun Ling returns to the garden.
:29:17. > :29:22.Teoh Yun Ling is suffering from aphasia, she goes back to the
:29:22. > :29:28.garden in the Cameron island Highland -- Cameron Highlands, to
:29:28. > :29:32.tie up the loose ends in her life. While she is there she decides to
:29:32. > :29:42.write down what she requires, before she loses the ability to
:29:42. > :29:44.
:29:44. > :29:49.write or read. It is a race against time for her to get everything done.
:29:49. > :29:54.Teoh Yun Ling is a withholding character, the process is one of
:29:54. > :29:57.slowly coming out. Does it drag? doesn't drag. There are some
:29:57. > :30:01.moments where a lot suddenly has to be crammed in, a lot of sudden
:30:01. > :30:08.explanation of what you are discovering. But, you know, that's
:30:08. > :30:14.true in some Dickens novels. I thought that the three layered time
:30:14. > :30:20.scheme, the present, with the old woman going back to this place. The
:30:20. > :30:24.mid-period when she's in her 30, when she has this relationship with
:30:24. > :30:30.this slightly irritating and enigmatic Japanese gardener. And
:30:30. > :30:33.the past, the wall, quite cleverly done, you get little bits of it.
:30:33. > :30:36.This novel does something quite tricky, and for the most part,
:30:36. > :30:41.pretty well, that the things you have to discover are being withheld
:30:41. > :30:45.by the narrator. The narrator has to have reasons, and she does, for
:30:45. > :30:50.not he will telling you stuff. It is not just through inconvenience,
:30:50. > :30:57.I thought that was done very artfully. You are nodding on this
:30:57. > :31:02.one? It is veryically assured, it is not avoiding to committing -- it
:31:03. > :31:07.is technically assured, it is not avoiding commit to go the book, but
:31:07. > :31:12.it is bits of when it is revealed. There is slowness and then a jump.
:31:12. > :31:21.There are the parallels with the Zen processes she is going through,
:31:21. > :31:24.and Martian art philosophy, and with the guard -- martial arts
:31:24. > :31:28.philosophy with the garden. It deals with a lot of different
:31:28. > :31:36.things. It is also very visual? is incredibly, you come away with
:31:36. > :31:40.the feeling of being in the garden in the Cameroon Highlands. He
:31:40. > :31:44.carries that on with Aritomo, the gardener, I thought he was one of
:31:44. > :31:48.the most intriguing characters in all six book, he stays with you.
:31:48. > :31:53.There is a genuine proper twist at the end. There are big themes in
:31:53. > :31:59.this book, to do with historical, huge themes to do with Japan and
:31:59. > :32:07.Malaya, and the war. There are huge emotional themes to do with memory
:32:07. > :32:12.and forget twoing. She -- forgetting. She loses her memory,
:32:12. > :32:18.and you think she wants to lose her memory, and the issue with the
:32:18. > :32:21.garden, can the garden heal? I found a very slow but serious
:32:21. > :32:24.eroticim running underneath it. When you get into a certain part of
:32:24. > :32:27.the book and it starts to talk about the tattooing, you have
:32:27. > :32:31.opened up into another side of the Japanese. I thought its other
:32:31. > :32:39.brilliance to me was that it showed you the two sides of Japan.
:32:39. > :32:44.Certainly being a sort of westerner, you get your, Eric Lomax died this
:32:44. > :32:49.week, who wrote The Railway Man. Here you are in the war reading it
:32:49. > :32:53.as a westerner, with your own preconceived ideas, and you are
:32:53. > :32:57.given something completely different, not in a laid on way.
:32:57. > :33:02.has lots of strange, mixed and hateful feelings about it. None of
:33:02. > :33:10.them really are much to do with the British. It has what chine and
:33:10. > :33:15.Malay people, and all that. Even the main character is South
:33:15. > :33:22.Africa. It is extraordinary from that point of view. It is beautiful,
:33:22. > :33:28.beautiful writing, it talks about an allow looking like a minora, he
:33:28. > :33:33.throws in these things and makes it dense and rich. The tattoo stuff
:33:33. > :33:39.could be sleazey and peculiar, and the redemption could be nasty and
:33:39. > :33:46.cheap like Oprah redemption, but it is calm and complex. Let's move on
:33:46. > :33:51.to this complex, could fall into a drug-induced cliche, does it?
:33:51. > :33:57.it is really an honourable success or two. I think in a way it is
:33:57. > :34:04.better than Boris, because it isn't just somebody justifying their bad
:34:04. > :34:09.habit, but someone looking at all the layers and interpretation of
:34:09. > :34:14.drugs. Looking at drugs as a religion, looking at all the crisis
:34:14. > :34:19.thing running through it. It is beautifully observed. It is a
:34:19. > :34:23.lovely confident portrayal of a bit of India. It is shown in way of
:34:23. > :34:28.London and New York. This is Mumbai, if you don't know enough about it,
:34:28. > :34:33.tough, I won't keep explaining it, this isn't cheap. Here we are, huge
:34:33. > :34:39.cast, enormously complex changes of viewpoint and history, always very
:34:39. > :34:45.alive and compassionate. With Bombay, the hero and her win, the
:34:45. > :34:49.pun is intended -- heroin, the pun is intended at the beginning and
:34:49. > :34:53.end of the book -- heroine, the pun is intended for the beginning and
:34:53. > :34:59.end of the Boca? I thought the drugs were interesting as the whole
:34:59. > :35:04.history of the down. You start at the beginning with the
:35:04. > :35:08.sweetness and then you move into the heroin cocaine. As you see it
:35:09. > :35:15.the society changes. The old-style communities fall apart. He has
:35:15. > :35:20.wonderful character as well. He has this fantastic Dimple, called,
:35:20. > :35:25.again, another incredibly endearing character, who we have all met on
:35:25. > :35:27.the wonderful trip through the six books. She's completely
:35:27. > :35:31.unforgettable, the strange person who wants to be educated, to be
:35:31. > :35:39.kind, good, and wants to better herself. She's very touching and
:35:39. > :35:44.moving, he does a clever thing with the narrator, he has this cool
:35:44. > :35:49.narrator that pops up, periodically. I'm not sure it is clever, agree
:35:49. > :35:54.with the contents, there is really good writing in it t the individual
:35:54. > :35:59.episodes and characters are fine. It is not just about drugs it is a
:35:59. > :36:04.narco-narrative, you move from one character to another. From episode
:36:04. > :36:09.to another, from one voice, first person, third person. I felt he was
:36:09. > :36:14.giving himself permission, in a way you two really enjoyed, I found it
:36:14. > :36:21.a bit iarksome, sometimes, to leave and come back and do whatever he
:36:21. > :36:26.wanted, with very little rhyme or reason. No, he was in control. He
:36:26. > :36:32.is a poet, where he gets poetic, he always steps back and says I'm
:36:32. > :36:36.being poetic there. It is not being poetic. He's in control of the
:36:36. > :36:41.narrative. If he stylistically deviates from the narrative he
:36:41. > :36:47.tells you why. He has running themes and names. He's in control
:36:47. > :36:53.of that, a guy who knows what he's up to. He's not doing the cheap, it
:36:53. > :36:56.is tribute so stick anything in. It is good writing. Is this beacon
:36:56. > :37:02.frontational, in a sense, interest has been certain controversy in
:37:02. > :37:09.India about the dirty drugs washing that is done, the white tiger
:37:09. > :37:13.winning the Booker in 208, there was problems in Italy because it
:37:13. > :37:19.dealt with things. There is quite a surprise for the
:37:19. > :37:24.western reader, any way, in reading the material that is in this book.
:37:24. > :37:27.It is unlike any other novel about India. I didn't feel it was a
:37:27. > :37:31.surprising thing. In a sense they were there looking at the hippies
:37:31. > :37:35.arriving, and that sense that there we all were, crawling over India,
:37:35. > :37:40.looking for whatever bits of drugs we could pick up, and be hippies
:37:40. > :37:45.like that. I thought all that was very well
:37:45. > :37:49.done. The controversy is extremely Indian-stoked. You know, that
:37:49. > :37:53.everybody knows this is what happened. He's very gentle, and I
:37:53. > :37:58.thought, given the savagry of a lot of the stuff he's dealing with,
:37:58. > :38:02.which is extreme poverty, people stealing, and drugs. It is quite
:38:03. > :38:12.extraordinary an achievement, that it floats through. He's bang on the
:38:12. > :38:18.money with it. Which book do you think should win? It is a hard call
:38:18. > :38:23.thisy, I think Hilary Mantel should win as a book -- call this thing. I
:38:23. > :38:26.think Hilary Mantel should win as a book, I would be happy if
:38:26. > :38:30.Narcopolis and The Garden Of Evening Mists, and even Umbrella by
:38:30. > :38:35.Will Self. All credit to Peter Stothard and his team, it is a
:38:35. > :38:40.fantastic year. Any of the three boys, it is sad but true. I would
:38:40. > :38:45.be perfectly happy with any of them for different reasons, they are all
:38:45. > :38:51.great books. There are no horrible books here, and we are adding to
:38:51. > :38:57.the misery of being shortlisted, it is an emotional tournament so I
:38:57. > :39:02.feel bad. I think Mantel is the most aDom accomplished, but giving
:39:02. > :39:08.part two of the trilogy is tricky for the judges. I think Will Self
:39:08. > :39:14.would be my bookies tip. I think it is an extraordinary achievement, it
:39:14. > :39:21.is an exercise as much as a book that will take you out of yourself.
:39:21. > :39:25.I don't think she will win, but I wouldn't mind if Swimming Home won.
:39:25. > :39:29.The winner of the �50,000 Man Booker prides for 2012 will be
:39:29. > :39:33.announced on Tuesday night -- prize, for 2012, will be announced on
:39:33. > :39:39.Tuesday night. Let's consider another lucrative award, the winner
:39:39. > :39:46.of the five Nobel Prizes have been revealed, one for a day of the week.
:39:46. > :39:52.The European Union won, and it was literature's turn to the tune of
:39:52. > :39:57.�750,000. The Nobel Prize for Literature was established in 1901,
:39:57. > :40:04.Alfred Noble, the favourite Swedish chemist and creator of dynamite
:40:04. > :40:08.created the role. Past winners have included Rudyard
:40:08. > :40:12.Kipling and Doris Lessing, as well as author unknown in the west.
:40:12. > :40:19.Every year 18 members of the literary elite from the Swedish
:40:19. > :40:29.Academy, are elected to look at a shortlist of 20 writer. Yesterday
:40:29. > :40:39.the 109th laureate in literature was revealed. The Nobel Prize for
:40:39. > :40:40.
:40:40. > :40:43.literature is awarded to Mo Yan. grew up at the time of the Cultural
:40:43. > :40:48.Revolution, and is the first Chinese resident to win the Nobel
:40:48. > :40:52.Prize in Literature. He had no formal or higher he hadcation, but
:40:52. > :40:59.began writing while serving in the People's Liberation Army, in the
:40:59. > :41:03.1970s. His best known novel is Red Sorghum, made into a film in 1987.
:41:03. > :41:10.Acclaimed books such as Big Breasts And Wide Hipss, and Life And Death
:41:10. > :41:17.Are Wearing Me Out, have been likened to Marqui,s had most recent
:41:17. > :41:23.novel, Frog, is called a critque, because of the Chinese population
:41:23. > :41:27.control one-child policy. One of the jobs of the Nobel now is
:41:28. > :41:30.to introduce writers to those of us who haven't read them. As it is you
:41:30. > :41:35.are reading Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out, how do you respond
:41:35. > :41:38.to the award? Der rific, I think it is great, what it is for --
:41:38. > :41:44.terrifically, I think it is great, what is it for, you open the world
:41:44. > :41:53.up to a writer you might not come across. I think he's wonderful,
:41:53. > :41:57.because I like the Chinese myths and the monkey tales when they went
:41:57. > :42:03.to collect the scriptures from St Paul. He has a great sense of
:42:03. > :42:10.humour. There is serp dissent from the dissident population of China,
:42:10. > :42:16.or the community there, they say he's state-sponsored and a man of
:42:16. > :42:21.the state? Non-I don't know, -- I don't know, writers used to get it
:42:21. > :42:30.because it is the turn of the west or the Soviet Union. Writers have
:42:30. > :42:34.escaped that, it has another role, which is confering something like
:42:34. > :42:38.immortality on writers we know well. I feel sometimes there are certain
:42:38. > :42:45.kinds of writers, you have a certain proper political direction
:42:45. > :42:49.who get it, and others like, I pose Philip Roth the obvious answer, who
:42:49. > :42:53.aren't positive about humanity ever to win it. Watch this space. That
:42:53. > :42:58.is all we have time for. My thanks to my guests.
:42:59. > :43:07.You can stay tuned for Later, which includes performances from The
:43:07. > :43:13.Vaccine, and JesseWare, next week we are coming from London, to look
:43:13. > :43:21.at film highlight. We look at a film now of a film that get his
:43:22. > :43:24.premier, here are the Rolling Stones in Crossfire Hurricane.
:43:24. > :43:28.Things happened for us. Why? chemical reaction, it happened, I
:43:28. > :43:38.don't know. What would you say? I really don't
:43:38. > :43:39.
:43:39. > :43:47.know. They have almost as many enemies as