WBC: Michael Chabon

yesterday morning (wednesday 11th), 10.06-10.56am (repeated 12.06am, and repeated from 3.06am sunday and 12.06pm saturday), on bbc world service radio 

• michael chabon (in the world book club series) (interviewed by harriett gilbert) 

“American writer Michael Chabon talks about his 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

From Jewish mysticism to Houdini to the Golden Age of Comic Books and WWII, Chabon’s immersive novel deals with escape and transformation through the lives of two Jewish boys in New York.

FT: Miller & Laski

yesterday evening (tuesday 26th), 10.00-10.45pm, on bbc radio 3   

betty miller and marghanita laski (presented by matthew sweet, with • novelist howard jacobson, • academic lisa mullen, and • author lara feigel) (in the free thinking series)

“Rejected by her usual publisher, Farewell Leicester Square is a novel by Betty Miller, written in 1935, exploring antisemitism, Jewishness and ‘marrying out’.

Marghanita Laski may now be best known for her contributions to broadcasting on programmes like The Brains Trust, but was also a published author of many stories including The Victorian Chaise-Longue and Little Boy Lost.

Both writers have now been republished by Persephone Books.”

OB: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

this afternoon (thursday 24th), 3.30-4.00pm (repeated from 4.00pm sunday), on bbc radio 4 

open book (presented by johny pitts) 

“Award-winning Israeli author • Ayelet Gundar-Goshen talks to Johny Pitts about her latest novel The Wolf Hunt, a suspenseful exploration of the fault lines in a community, a school, and a family, as a mother begins to suspect her teenage son of committing a terrible crime.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is a clinical psychologist and writer, and discusses the links between her two worlds, as well as what it means to be a parent when you fear that your child may be the perpetrator and not the victim.”

TE: Philip Roth

this evening (thursday 29th), 10.45-11.00pm, on bbc radio 3 

philip roth (4th of 5 episodes of controversies: american writing of the 1960s, in the the essay series) (presented by michael goldfarb)

“Five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s.

Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.

In this essay, he focuses on Philip Roth. Roth became permanently alienated from American Jews and even his own mother asked him if he was anti-Semitic.

Yentl the Yeshiva Boy

yesterday afternoon (sunday 12th), 3.00-4.00pm, on bbc radio 4 

yentl the yeshiva boy (by isaac bashevis singer, dramatised by kerry shale) (with kerry shale, olivia marcus, richard fleeshman, and debbie chazen)

“Poland 1872, a Jewish shtetl.

In her heart, sixteen year-old Yentl knows she will never be a wife and mother. Her father reluctantly allows her to join him in morning prayers because, he tells her, Yentl has ‘the soul of a man’.

When he dies, she crosses the line. In order to continue her Bible studies, a practice forbidden to Jewish women, she dons her father’s clothes and takes to the road as Anshel, a young man in search of a religious seminary. A universal tale of spiritual and gender liberation.”

OL: Yentl

yesterday afternoon (sunday 12th), 2.45-3.00pm, on bbc radio 4 

yentl the yeshiva boy (presented by john yorke) (in the opening lines series)

“John Yorke explores the themes and impact of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story Yentl. Written in the 1950s but set in the orthodox Jewish community of late nineteenth century Poland, the story was made into a successful Hollywood film starring Barbara Streisand.

Yentl, a young orthodox woman, rebels against the constraints of a woman’s life and disguises herself as a young man in order to be able to study at a Yeshiva, or religious college.

In describing the complications and misunderstandings that ensue Singer offers insights into religious, social and gender politics not only of the late nineteenth century but of his own, and our, times.”

including contributions from …

• kerry shale, actor broadcaster and writer

• translator evelyn torton beck 

• rebecca abrams, author, teacher and critic

WBC: Ayelet Gundar-Goshen: Waking Lions

yesterday morning (saturday 4th), 12.06-12.55pm, on bbc world service radio (repeated 3.06am, and 10.06am wednesday and 12.06am thursday) 

ayelet gundar-goshen: waking lions (presented by harriet gilbert) 

“Driving too fast through Israel’s Negev desert in his SUV after a long day in the hospital, Dr Eitan Green accidentally hits a lone Eritrean man on the empty moonlit road, killing him instantly.

Panic stricken he drives off instead of calling for help and confessing what he’s done. A decision that will change the course of his life irrevocably because the dead man’s wife, the elegant, enigmatic Sikrit, knows what happened. In atonement for his crime, Sikrit insists the doctor start treating Eritrean refugees after his hospital dayshifts at clandestine makeshift hospitals in the desert.

A nail-biting and morally devastating drama of guilt, racism, shame and desire which stares unflinchingly at the darkness inside us all, and asks the reader: what would you have done?”

including interview with …

• author ayelet gundar-goshen

OB: Lavie Tidhar

yesterday afternoon (thursday 4th), 3.38-3.42pm (repeated from 4.09pm sunday), on bbc radio 4 

open book (presented by chris power) includes … 

“Chris Power discusses the ethical questions authors confront as they research and write about crime and the faint lines between fact and fiction …

Lavie Tidhar‘s novel Maror spans 50 years of turbulent Israeli history by pulling together true stories of crime and corruption to reveal truths hidden from view for over forty years.”

including interview with …

• author lavie tidhar 

FR: Howard Jacobson 2022

this evening (tuesday 8th), 7.24-7.40pm, on bbc radio 4 

front row (presented by nick ahad) leads with …

“• Howard Jacobson, who won the Booker prize for his novel The Finkler Question, discusses his new memoir Mother’s Boy, an exploration of how he became a writer, of belonging and not-belonging, of being both English and Jewish.”

Today: Bloomsday 100

this morning (wednesday 26th), 8.40-8.47am, on bbc radio 4 

today (presented by martha kearney) includes …

“It’s going to have an ordinary man in Dublin, on an ordinary day, and he was going to be called Leopold Bloom, and he was going to wander the city, He was Jewish, which left him immediately that he didn’t have to deal with Catholic/Protestant questions in Ireland …”

including interview with …

• writer colm toibin