World Book Club Folgen

Coming up the first in our London Calling season of World Book Clubs which will be going out each Saturday over the next four weeks.In the run up to the London Olympic games we'll be discussing four novels which focus on different aspects of the United Kingdom’s colourful and historic capital city. This week we talk to acclaimed novelist, biographer and critic Peter Ackroyd who will be discussing his haunting Whitbread prize-winning novel, Hawksmoor, with an audience at St George's Church, Bloomsbury.St George's is the final church designed by lauded architect of the English Baroque, Nicholas Hawksmoor, a central and sinister figure in this compelling murder mystery set amongst the labyrinthine streets of 18th Century London.(Image: Peter Ackroyd)

World Book Club celebrates the 25th anniversary of the publication of that modern classic novel Beloved with another chance to hear the programme with American writer Toni Morrison.In 2009 Toni Morrison came to the South Bank Arts Centre beside the River Thames in London to talk to a packed audience about her Pulitzer Prize-winning, international bestseller Beloved.Having lost none of its power to shock a quarter of a century on, Beloved stares unflinchingly into the abyss of racism and transforms history into a poetic chronicle of slavery and its terrible, unending aftermath.(Image: Toni Morrison. Credit: Peter Devlin)

Harriett Gilbert talks this month to American writer Jonathan Safran Foer about his novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.Set in the aftermath of 9/11, it is the story of a young boy coming to terms with the tragedy of his father's death in the World Trade Centre. After finding a mysterious key left behind in his Dad's closet, Oskar sets out across New York hoping to find some answers. Both a meditation on pain, loss and the healing power of love - as well as an examination of the psyche of post 9/11 New York - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a novel that lingers in the mind.(Image: Jonathan S Foer. Credit: Giuseppe Aliprandi)