93. Toni Morrison - Beloved

In this episode Andy and John are joined by  Preti Taneja a novelist and teacher in prisons and in universities. Her novel We That Are Young  published by the excellent Galley Beggar Press won the 2018 Desmond Elliot Prize for the best debut of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the ‘Books are my Bag Readers Choice’ Awards, and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize and for Europe’s most prestigious award for a work of world literature, the Prix Jan Michalski. It has been translated into seven languages to date and will soon be a major international TV series from Gaumont. Fellow writer Mark Haddon, wrote that ‘it does what all the best novels do. It expands the possibilities of the form.’ The book under discussion is Beloved by Toni Morrison, first published in 1987 by Knopf, it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, among many other prizes. In 2006, the New York Times declared Beloved the best work of American fiction of the previous twenty-five years.
In this episode John also enthuses about Lisa Blower’s sparkling story collection It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s published by Myriad Editions and Andy discovers the perfect holiday read in Paraic O’Donnell’s The House on Vesper Sands. published by Weidenfeld.

Book mentioned:

Toni Morrison - Beloved;Beloved audio book (read by Toni Morrison); Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations; The Bluest Eye; Song of Solomon
Preti Taneja - We That Are Young
Lisa Blower - It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s
Paraic O’Donnell - The House on Vesper Sands
Kit de Waal (ed) - Common People
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
William Faulkner - Light in August; Absalom, Absalom
Gayl Jones - Corregidora

Other links:

Toni Morrison interviews b Charlie Rose (1993)
Toni Morrison interviewed by the Paris Review (1993)
Beloved movie DVD (1998)