The Book Review Show The Review Show

On the review show tonight, the six books shortlisted for this year's

Man Booker Prize. Hilary Mantel returns to the court of Henry VII

in Bring Up The Bodies. Will Self span as fragmented century of

modernism in Umbrella. A family adrift in the south of France in

Deborah Levy's Swimming Home. A journey to oblivion in Germany in

Alison Moore's The Lighthouse. Dreams and depraf vee in the opium

dens of Bombay in Narcopolis. And post-war Malaya in Tan Twan Eng's

The Garden Of Evening Mists. Joining me tonight to run through

the six books on the shortlist are John Mullan Professor of English

literature at university of London, Rosie Boycott and novelist Peter

Kendall. All three of whom have judged eminent -- AL Kennedy, all

three have judged eminent book. Bring Up The Bodies is the sequel

for Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, she won the Booker in 2009. If she wins

again she will be the first British winner to pull off the double. Will

Self has never been nominated before, and with his most

uncompromising novel so far he's up with avenge begins. Umbrella spans

much of the 20th century, constantly shifting time and place,

and pushing at the boundaries of literary form and narrative. At the

heart are two characters, the unfamiliar Audrey Death, in a

catatonic state for 50 years, and her psychiatrists, Zack Busner,

whom regular Will Self readers might recognise. In the past he has

been a hierophantic character, a symbolic character, an outline I

have scrubbed down like transfer on to books. This time we go inside

him. A lot of the critical writing surrounding Umbrella has focused on

formallist questions, and said it is a tribute or homage to Joyce and

Ulysses and Virginia Woolf and the high modernist, and it has all this

clever inter-textual, and Audrey Death falls into a coma at 1922,

when Ulysses was published, she mis -- missed out on modernism. That is

all there, but that is not why I chose to write in a stream of

consciousness and stream of present. I think books are very much like

children, you are insemated by the muse, you gestate the book for

almost nine months, for me, then you give birth, which is the act of

writing it, if all things go well you drive it up to university and

buy it an electric kettle and get a bank account for it, then it is on

its own. Bring Up The Bodies continues the story of Thomas

Cromwell and his involvement in the complicated dynastic love life of

Henry VII. We spoke to Hilary Mantel earlier in the year.

How do we see the character of Thomas Cromwell evolve, do you

think, between Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies? There is a small gap.

We leave Wolf Hall July 1535, the evening of Thomas Moore's execution,

we resume in September, when the thing is on progress, and the royal

party is actually at Wolf Hall. What changes at Wolf Hall is that

Thomas Cromwell realises that the king has fallen in love with the

daughter of the house, Jane Seymour. Why do you think, in general,

people are so drawn to this period? It's the repositry of all stories

all theme, all archetypes, I think it touches on our collective

processes. Henry is Bluebeard, the wife is victim, Cromwell is a

trickster figure. It is straight from fairytale, and yet it is real.

It was enacted, not just in sexual politics, but actual politics.

There is a third book in the trilogy. Are you clear now, in your

own mind, how that is going to develop? It can only end one way,

unfortunately. We know the history. Yes, I often end my books with

beheadings, readers will have noticed.

"a woman pushes through the crowd at the gate, grabbing at the bridle

of his horse. Before the guards push her away, she shouts at him

"God help us, Cromwell, what a man the king is. How many wives does he

mean to have?" "As was just said, we know the story, but why is this

not an issue, or is it an issue? is not an issue at all. It is a

stunning book this, it is a much better book, I think, than Wolf

Hall. You felt some of the history was layered on a bit. By the time

you get to Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel is wearing this story

and these lives. She's inhabiting it so completely, that she really

makes it into the present. Which is why you know the end doesn't matter.

It becomes a thrilling journey. There is so many things about the

book that is extraordinary, one is the character of Thomas Cromwell,

who he is now a Mafia boss, a controller, a lover, a deceitful

person, also kind to his own, who you know also has this incredible

end ahead of him. Then you have the character of Henry, they spar

together throughout the book. And the interrogation, as you come

towards the end of it, is extraordinary, it is completely

chilling. At one point the line comes up, "I'm going to be punished

for my thought, even my thoughts can be criminal". You feel you

would be in Guantanamo, you are in the present day. I think it is an

extraordinary achievement. I didn't expect to like it as much, actually,

from the moment you pick it up, from the first paragraph, which is

about Cromwell out hunting with his hawks and he's calling out the

names of his dead children. You are captivated by it. Alison, were you

as captivated? I wasn't captivated at all really. There were things I

liked in the political element, the dealing of torture, and the

retrospective rewriting of history was interesting and acute. For me

it was leaning on what I already know about Cromwell, and what I

already know about Henry. The tone of it, I don't know, bits of it

just sounded like Thor in the Avengers, the one who isn't cool.

The strange mannered style, occasionally things, people saying

something is "dead meat" and "you had to be there", it doesn't sound

if you had dor to me. I didn't feel e-- Tudor to me. I didn't feel

drawn into it. Anne Boleyn was a strong character, but it was almost

as if Mantel wanted it to be Anne's book and she wasn't gelling with

the men. A lot of the drama happens off, a lot of Henry's drama happens

off-screen. Not in a way that is threatening. It is just absent.

People are narrating very dramatic things that happened at some other

point that I thought was a problem. It sounds if you were a judge in

2009, John Mullan you were a judge. Is it a worthy sequence, second

novel syndrome, is that what you think? I have a casting vote, and I

cast it with Rosie. I'm surprised at what Alison says, I think it is

a worthy sequel. It is a tighter, slightly more rapid book.

Compressed time? It is more compressed. I loved the first book

as well. I was one of the judges that voted for it t I'm delighted

it won. And I think the little retrospect we have got those that

Hilary Mantel is somebody who has pleased all sort of reader. I think

the extraordinary thing is, we were talking earlier about whether it

mattered that this is such a well known story. And the extraordinary

thing is, that what she manages to do, it is all written in the

present tense, we will talk about other novels written in the present

tense. She manages to unstitch history, it is seen through

Cromwell's point of view. He doesn't know what is going to

happen. He is dangerously manoeuvring, most dangerous when

most confident, you feel. She makes what we now know, as if it is a

template, absolutely set in stone, seem contingent, random, risky, and

constantly surprising. I don't know of any other historical novelist,

certainly none alive, that manage to do that. I have to stop you

there. You mentioned the present tense, we should move to a novel

where there is a continuous stream of consciousness, that is one way

of decribing it. This is Umbrella. We will hear an extract where the

psychiatrist, Busner, for the first time encounters Audrey Death, who

has been in a psychiatric hospital for 50 years.

"Along comes Zachary, he wonders, am I blurring, Ashwushushwa, she

slurs, what is that? Ashuwa-ashuwa, one of her bright eyes leers at the

floor. She asks is it my shoes, my Hush Puppies. Her eye films with

disappointment, then clears and leers pointedly at the floor win

again. She's drooling, spit pools at the point of her cheekbone, and

stretches unbroken, to where it doodles on the tile, with a nail's

silvering. ". We get the multiplicity of

voices from that reading. How is it on the page? I think it is a bit

more difficult on the page. Will Self does what the reader has to do

is find accents and intone nations. The page is an extraordinary thing,

it is actually no paragraph, no break, no indication as to the

difference between speech and thought, and narration. It is quite

a sort of demanding thing. The reader has to put in all those

division. He has made it a very demanding book, page by page, to

read, you have to make of it the kind of axe Septembers he has just

given us. At the same time there are narrative structures, we had

this amazing dissolving of time, from one into another, does it feel

nostalgic for a modernist lost past or some how progressive? I don't

know the answer to that, there is a statement right at the beginning,

saying this is a story that could only be told in this form. It

seemed a grandiose thing to say, it is an amazingly good story, the

story is well known, these people fall into this coma, they get

brought back, it is the story that is in the Wakenings. It isle well

known and could be told in lots of ways. This puzzled me. It took me a

long time to get into this book. I would find, as John was decribing

the pages with different things in it, suddenly if you saw a

consecutive 200 words of narrative you would leap at it, and you would

be, like now I know where I am, and then off somewhere else. You change

40, 50 years in the course of a sentence. It is extremely easy to

get lost. I found, a consequence, it was difficult to form any

emotional attachment to any of the protaganists of the book. You would

get close and then they are off. Will Self is never good at

sympathetic characters by his own admission? This one is, it takes

you 20 pages to get into what he's doing. If you lie back and let him

do it to you, it is passionate and socially engaged and angry. There

are enormously dense moments of huge pathos. Beautiful, equisite

bits of humour, wonderful dialogue. The only way he could get away with

what he is doing, it is a huge stream of consciousness. It is the

correct form for that book to be, whether you could talk about it

technically or not. It is the book it should be. Why do you say that.

Psychosis, loss of consciousness? You have people jumping in and out

of time, people losing huge numbers of years, within it was a thread

running through, where you have the sense everybody could be, in some

way, connected. This sense if you had an awareness of the pain that

is out there and the damage is out there, it would form this

collective unconsciousness insanity. Or that was the way it was working

for me. It certainly, because he can do different points of view,

absolutely convincingly, because I can do different voice absolutely

convincing lo. The little clear -- convincingly. The little gear

change, you would have to go back maybe a sentence, you know who

everyone is and where they are, because of the quality of the

writing. It will throw things in, people going to or from charity

shops, that is all you need about the way they took, that is all you

need to know. It is gorgeous writing. I wasn't a big fan of Will

Self, sometimes I thought he was doing technical things for the hell

of it. This I feel his heart is in it. He has decided to do something

crazy, because it is about crazy people, either crazy medically, or

because they are in intolerable situations. The stuff about the

First World War is heart-breaking, beautiful, and done very densely

and deftly. If you are looking at the time scale and cast he's

running over, it is wonderful. It is the reverse of the man that

doesn't feel like a historical book that isn't. That is a beautifully-

done stream of consciousness. Will Self and Hilary Mantel are

published by big houses, Fourth Estate to name it. The next from

independents, Swimming Home, and The Lighthouse is published by Salt.

In The Lighthouse, we neat Futh, strangely bemused by his latest

mart tell separation, and thinking about his mother's leaving him when

he was young. His mother left when he was 12, we see the man he is now,

childlike and immature. Tensions heightened when Futh settles into a

hotel, called Hell House, run by a creepingly frustrated couple,

Bernard and Ester. She wants his attention, and she doesn't get it,

so she provokes him, bad attention is better than none. Between them

they are creating a situation in the hotel, which is going to be a

volatile situation for Futh to walk back into, at the end of the week.

Swimming Home is the story of two troubled British couples in the

south of France. Whose holiday is interrupted by the arrival of a

stranger. Kitty Finch is fiercely clever, she's fragile, according to

some characters they would call her unhinged. She appears to be

something different to every single character. When she's first

discovered in the swimming pool, in the Villa grounds. Swimming Home is

probably my most tightly-plotted novel. It is set chronologically

over five days. But, there is a little rupture in its narrative

design, which is is that I start with a glimpse of the near future,

and that's with Kitty Finch, and Joe in the car together.

Managers could have been so intimate with Kitty Finch had been

a pleasure, a pain, an experiment. But most of all it had been a

mistake. He asked her again to, please, please drive him safely

home, to his wife and daughter. Yes, she said, life is only worth living

because we hope it will get better, and we will all get home safely."

What I have my eye on when I was mapping Swimming Home, is how to

give the reader just the tiniest glimpse glimpse of something that

will happen, in the -- tiniest glimpse of something that will

happen in the near future, and how to make the past intrude, very

gently, on the every day of the sunny present. Does the past

successfully and mysteriously manage to intrude, or does it fall

into a dysfuntional middle-class family on holiday? It is a

dysfuntional middle-class family on holiday you know, you kind of know

from the cover what is going to happen. You absolutely know from

that little introduction, when she talks about Kitty Finch and Joe,

the protaganist. He's the poet. Then you know the moment you are at

the swimming pool, that swimming pool, somebody will be in that

swimming pool, and they are not swimming, and it will happen before

too long. There is hundreds of books that are sat with families in

Tuscany or the south of France, they are having a terrible time,

everyone is drinking too much and there is too much sup. Variations

on this theme happen, generally it is a middle-aged man who ends up

having frantic sex with a very young pretty woman. I didn't think

this book took that model any further. He's a poet in exile, very

issues and demon, does it take the book further? Judging from Alison's

body language, I will be a maverick on this. I thought it was terrific,

actually, I thought the fact it was a set-up you thought you knew, it

was being used, not repeated, really cleverly. The author, you

heard her there, it is a book for those who enjoy an "I do", a sense

of real design and a little bit of trickery with our expectation. I

will say one thing did brilliantly, that was part of the design. It

shifts around view points, a lot. The different characters?

different characters, just let me say, just let me say, and it does

so for the opposite reason that novelists usually do, including at

least one of the other novelists we have to talk about here. Which is,

she's constantly giving you the sense of how characters don't

understand each other. I'm telling you what they think. She doesn't

just do that, she does it to create this kind of drama where it is all

about you trying to guess people's motivations. Why has the wife

invited the firl in, is she trying to get -- girl in, is she trying to

get her to seduce her husband, to go into with her, to produce

another catastrophe. I thought it was immensely clever and I'm

looking forward to re-reading it. What is my body language, not

liking middle-class people on holiday. I was mystified because

the individual observations can be very funny and acute observations

with writers, and poets using it like electricity. The way bad

marriages operate, destroying each other while pretending to have each

other's best interests at heart. I won't talk about the ending, it was

a remarkable surprise. There is another ending which I didn't

believe even more. It was mystifying. It is obviously that

she is a great observer of people, but the fabric of the novel didn't

hold enough for me. Thanks for keeping the mystery, as well as

being a mystery. There is this hapless character, Futh, we are

going to see him, here he is trying to work out how to communicate or

flirt with someone at a neighbouring table.

"at the table next to his, an attractive young women is sitting

alone. It occurs that at the first trip to Germany, his father would

have been the same age as him now. Futh can't imagine his newly-single

father, he can't imagine himself in a bar or passing, starting up a

conversation with a strange woman, which would lead to his taking her

back to his hotel room. What had his father said, my son's asleep in

the bedroom but use the bathroom. Futh imagined a conversation

between the woman at the next table, how does a conversation move from

hello to the hotel bathroom. there a danger in such an

inexpressed character as Futh that the novel feels empty, or in a

profound way? He is not empty in a deliberately, thought about, and

contrived way. I think the whole point of the My Booky Wooker, part

-- the booker, is to attract you to novels you wouldn't come across

before. I wouldn't had have read this book if it wasn't on the

shortlist, I'm so glad I did. She's a talented writer for a novel. It

is loom too much. She makes two plots that come together at the

beginning and the end, they are interveefed with a very strong

sense -- interleefd with a very strong sense of purpose. I didn't

know what was going on. I'm easily surprised. You thought it was more

telegraph? I could see the train coming from page one. I could smell

the smoke, not to give a plot point away. It is a fine first novel, but

if you are going to draw attention to a fine first novel, draw

attention to Joanna Cavanagh, or Jenny Fagan, there are other people

out there. There are always nice intellectual reasons for not giving

your characters emotion, if you are feeling nervous about doing a first

novel, this is a very absent character in an uncontrolled way,

and quite a slim plot. There is this terrible, leaning on these

metaphors and sim lays, I get that the -- simile, I get the lighthouse

is a phallic shape, and is a penis shape, and it is a warm dome that

the man is stroking, and he is taking it out of his trousers. I

get it, I got it. The on coming storm is an on coming store.

think you are being hard on it. I read it a few week ago, it stayed

with me in a very strange way about this inalterably sad character. She

really gives this appalling legacy of his childhood, his mother

walking out, all these things, this man is essentially hopeless. I

don't think I have ever met quite such a hopeless, sad character. I

think she actually writes very, very well. Her sentences are very

pared down, it is too circular and neat, life needs rags, but it has a

lot going for it. It is good on smells. She is not doing enough,

obviously she is a poet, it sometimes breaks through and comes

on. Jo consider what you said earlier, the great -- Consider the

smell stuff, it is how memories are linked to the present. It is

because she's making that rather than the complaint earlier.

suddenly transfares it to Ester for a one-off, for no reason, it is a

peculiar one that doesn't sit with her character, and it doesn't have

an end. It hasn't decided how it will finish it just stops. It does

decide, you have to be fair. You can figure out what happens in the

end. When he saw the train coming, that is the end, in metaphorical

terms. We have to end the discussion emphatically. The last

two novels selected for the shortlist are set in different

parts of Asia. Five years ago Tan Twan Eng was long listed for his

debut the Gift of Rain. He has followed that with The Garden Of

Evening Mists. Joining him is Indian-born poet and musician, Jeet

Thayil, who is in the running with a debut novel. Narcopolis is set in

opium dens of 1910. It is an underworld which Thayil has

firsthand experience. I was in that world for many, many years. I

didn't think I would ever come out of it. One way to bear it is to

think of it as a form of embedded research. To use a trendy,

modernistic phrase." It wasn't much of a street, it was narrow and

congested, there was an endless stream of trucks and hand carts and

bicycle, it went from Bombay road to Bombay Central. To talk along it

was to tour the city's fleshiest parts, the long rooms of sex, in

the midst of it, Rashid's opium room was beginning a local landmark.

Trained staff, genuine opium pipes, credit if you are good for it, best

quality all." People that I knew at that time

were doing drugs, it was the only alternative the world offered them

for a better life. Without it, their lives would have been

entirely bereft of anything approaching beauty, comfort or love.

The Garden Of Evening Mists is set in Malaya, in the years following

World War II. Teoh Yun Ling is the sole survivor

of a Japanese world camp, and haunted by her experiences there,

she is fascinated by the art of Japanese garden design. She becomes

an apprentice to the former gardener to the Emperor Hirohito,

as a memorial to her sister, who died in the court. "the garden has

to change your heart, saddened, uplifted. It has to make you

appreciate the impermanence of serving in life. That point in time,

just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is

about to fall. That moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful

about life. The" These are two characters with a lot to learn,

they are circling not revealing their past. There is a lot of

hiding and deceit going on there. It ties in with one of the

principles of gardening, which is borrowed scenery, you borrow

something from outside, you make the artificial or distant part of

the environment. It is deception, basically, for me.

Years later, and now very ill, Teoh Yun Ling returns to the garden.

Teoh Yun Ling is suffering from aphasia, she goes back to the

garden in the Cameron island Highland -- Cameron Highlands, to

tie up the loose ends in her life. While she is there she decides to

write down what she requires, before she loses the ability to

write or read. It is a race against time for her to get everything done.

Teoh Yun Ling is a withholding character, the process is one of

slowly coming out. Does it drag? doesn't drag. There are some

moments where a lot suddenly has to be crammed in, a lot of sudden

explanation of what you are discovering. But, you know, that's

true in some Dickens novels. I thought that the three layered time

scheme, the present, with the old woman going back to this place. The

mid-period when she's in her 30, when she has this relationship with

this slightly irritating and enigmatic Japanese gardener. And

the past, the wall, quite cleverly done, you get little bits of it.

This novel does something quite tricky, and for the most part,

pretty well, that the things you have to discover are being withheld

by the narrator. The narrator has to have reasons, and she does, for

not he will telling you stuff. It is not just through inconvenience,

I thought that was done very artfully. You are nodding on this

one? It is veryically assured, it is not avoiding to committing -- it

is technically assured, it is not avoiding commit to go the book, but

it is bits of when it is revealed. There is slowness and then a jump.

There are the parallels with the Zen processes she is going through,

and Martian art philosophy, and with the guard -- martial arts

philosophy with the garden. It deals with a lot of different

things. It is also very visual? is incredibly, you come away with

the feeling of being in the garden in the Cameroon Highlands. He

carries that on with Aritomo, the gardener, I thought he was one of

the most intriguing characters in all six book, he stays with you.

There is a genuine proper twist at the end. There are big themes in

this book, to do with historical, huge themes to do with Japan and

Malaya, and the war. There are huge emotional themes to do with memory

and forget twoing. She -- forgetting. She loses her memory,

and you think she wants to lose her memory, and the issue with the

garden, can the garden heal? I found a very slow but serious

eroticim running underneath it. When you get into a certain part of

the book and it starts to talk about the tattooing, you have

opened up into another side of the Japanese. I thought its other

brilliance to me was that it showed you the two sides of Japan.

Certainly being a sort of westerner, you get your, Eric Lomax died this

week, who wrote The Railway Man. Here you are in the war reading it

as a westerner, with your own preconceived ideas, and you are

given something completely different, not in a laid on way.

has lots of strange, mixed and hateful feelings about it. None of

them really are much to do with the British. It has what chine and

Malay people, and all that. Even the main character is South

Africa. It is extraordinary from that point of view. It is beautiful,

beautiful writing, it talks about an allow looking like a minora, he

throws in these things and makes it dense and rich. The tattoo stuff

could be sleazey and peculiar, and the redemption could be nasty and

cheap like Oprah redemption, but it is calm and complex. Let's move on

to this complex, could fall into a drug-induced cliche, does it?

it is really an honourable success or two. I think in a way it is

better than Boris, because it isn't just somebody justifying their bad

habit, but someone looking at all the layers and interpretation of

drugs. Looking at drugs as a religion, looking at all the crisis

thing running through it. It is beautifully observed. It is a

lovely confident portrayal of a bit of India. It is shown in way of

London and New York. This is Mumbai, if you don't know enough about it,

tough, I won't keep explaining it, this isn't cheap. Here we are, huge

cast, enormously complex changes of viewpoint and history, always very

alive and compassionate. With Bombay, the hero and her win, the

pun is intended -- heroin, the pun is intended at the beginning and

end of the book -- heroine, the pun is intended for the beginning and

end of the Boca? I thought the drugs were interesting as the whole

history of the down. You start at the beginning with the

sweetness and then you move into the heroin cocaine. As you see it

the society changes. The old-style communities fall apart. He has

wonderful character as well. He has this fantastic Dimple, called,

again, another incredibly endearing character, who we have all met on

the wonderful trip through the six books. She's completely

unforgettable, the strange person who wants to be educated, to be

kind, good, and wants to better herself. She's very touching and

moving, he does a clever thing with the narrator, he has this cool

narrator that pops up, periodically. I'm not sure it is clever, agree

with the contents, there is really good writing in it t the individual

episodes and characters are fine. It is not just about drugs it is a

narco-narrative, you move from one character to another. From episode

to another, from one voice, first person, third person. I felt he was

giving himself permission, in a way you two really enjoyed, I found it

a bit iarksome, sometimes, to leave and come back and do whatever he

wanted, with very little rhyme or reason. No, he was in control. He

is a poet, where he gets poetic, he always steps back and says I'm

being poetic there. It is not being poetic. He's in control of the

narrative. If he stylistically deviates from the narrative he

tells you why. He has running themes and names. He's in control

of that, a guy who knows what he's up to. He's not doing the cheap, it

is tribute so stick anything in. It is good writing. Is this beacon

frontational, in a sense, interest has been certain controversy in

India about the dirty drugs washing that is done, the white tiger

winning the Booker in 208, there was problems in Italy because it

dealt with things. There is quite a surprise for the

western reader, any way, in reading the material that is in this book.

It is unlike any other novel about India. I didn't feel it was a

surprising thing. In a sense they were there looking at the hippies

arriving, and that sense that there we all were, crawling over India,

looking for whatever bits of drugs we could pick up, and be hippies

like that. I thought all that was very well

done. The controversy is extremely Indian-stoked. You know, that

everybody knows this is what happened. He's very gentle, and I

thought, given the savagry of a lot of the stuff he's dealing with,

which is extreme poverty, people stealing, and drugs. It is quite

extraordinary an achievement, that it floats through. He's bang on the

money with it. Which book do you think should win? It is a hard call

thisy, I think Hilary Mantel should win as a book -- call this thing. I

think Hilary Mantel should win as a book, I would be happy if

Narcopolis and The Garden Of Evening Mists, and even Umbrella by

Will Self. All credit to Peter Stothard and his team, it is a

fantastic year. Any of the three boys, it is sad but true. I would

be perfectly happy with any of them for different reasons, they are all

great books. There are no horrible books here, and we are adding to

the misery of being shortlisted, it is an emotional tournament so I

feel bad. I think Mantel is the most aDom accomplished, but giving

part two of the trilogy is tricky for the judges. I think Will Self

would be my bookies tip. I think it is an extraordinary achievement, it

is an exercise as much as a book that will take you out of yourself.

I don't think she will win, but I wouldn't mind if Swimming Home won.

The winner of the �50,000 Man Booker prides for 2012 will be

announced on Tuesday night -- prize, for 2012, will be announced on

Tuesday night. Let's consider another lucrative award, the winner

of the five Nobel Prizes have been revealed, one for a day of the week.

The European Union won, and it was literature's turn to the tune of

�750,000. The Nobel Prize for Literature was established in 1901,

Alfred Noble, the favourite Swedish chemist and creator of dynamite

created the role. Past winners have included Rudyard

Kipling and Doris Lessing, as well as author unknown in the west.

Every year 18 members of the literary elite from the Swedish

Academy, are elected to look at a shortlist of 20 writer. Yesterday

the 109th laureate in literature was revealed. The Nobel Prize for

literature is awarded to Mo Yan. grew up at the time of the Cultural

Revolution, and is the first Chinese resident to win the Nobel

Prize in Literature. He had no formal or higher he hadcation, but

began writing while serving in the People's Liberation Army, in the

1970s. His best known novel is Red Sorghum, made into a film in 1987.

Acclaimed books such as Big Breasts And Wide Hipss, and Life And Death

Are Wearing Me Out, have been likened to Marqui,s had most recent

novel, Frog, is called a critque, because of the Chinese population

control one-child policy. One of the jobs of the Nobel now is

to introduce writers to those of us who haven't read them. As it is you

are reading Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out, how do you respond

to the award? Der rific, I think it is great, what it is for --

terrifically, I think it is great, what is it for, you open the world

up to a writer you might not come across. I think he's wonderful,

because I like the Chinese myths and the monkey tales when they went

to collect the scriptures from St Paul. He has a great sense of

humour. There is serp dissent from the dissident population of China,

or the community there, they say he's state-sponsored and a man of

the state? Non-I don't know, -- I don't know, writers used to get it

because it is the turn of the west or the Soviet Union. Writers have

escaped that, it has another role, which is confering something like

immortality on writers we know well. I feel sometimes there are certain

kinds of writers, you have a certain proper political direction

who get it, and others like, I pose Philip Roth the obvious answer, who

aren't positive about humanity ever to win it. Watch this space. That

is all we have time for. My thanks to my guests.

You can stay tuned for Later, which includes performances from The

Vaccine, and JesseWare, next week we are coming from London, to look

at film highlight. We look at a film now of a film that get his

premier, here are the Rolling Stones in Crossfire Hurricane.

Things happened for us. Why? chemical reaction, it happened, I

don't know. What would you say? I really don't

know. They have almost as many enemies as