RN Documentary: A Conversation with James Meek
Series: RN Documentaries
From: Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Length: 00:29:29
James Meek talks of his latest novel 'A People's Act of Love'. The book interweaves a number of complex themes including castration, cannibalism, love and revolution. James Meek also covered Russia, Eastern Europe, Chechnya and Iraq, as a correspondent for the Guardian newspaper.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
James Meek talks of his latest novel 'A People's Act of Love'. The book interweaves a number of complex themes including castration, cannibalism, love and revolution. James Meek also covered Russia, Eastern Europe, Chechnya and Iraq, as a correspondent for the Guardian newspaper.
Transcript
You?re listening to Radio Netherland?s Vox Humana. I?m Dheera Sujan and my guest on the programme this week is British author and journalist James Meek. He spent most of the 90?s reporting from the Ukraine and Russia. He?s also reported from Chechnya and from Iraq. His time up close to conflict has given him a wide experience of just what humanity is capable of. A knowledge he?s put to good use in his latest novel
?The People?s Act of Love.? The book acclaimed by critics and by the public is a dramatic tale about love, sacrifice and betrayal and is set in the harsh and beautiful landscape of Siberia.
Here?s a taste of what?s to come:
MUSIC TR 1
1. Book P 15
In the middle of October.. ..washed his hands again
This is Samarin, an enigmatic escaped convict who is full of tales of his experiences in a terrible Siberian prison camp called the White Garden. Just after...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
All pieces from carrier title cd:The Terem quartet. All performed by Terem Quartet. Realworld CDRW23 0777786284 22
- Tr 1. ?Lyrical Dance? Perf?Terem Quarted. Comp: Trad. 2?30.
- Tr 4 ?Cossack?s Farewell.? Comp: Trad 3?18
- Tr 9 ?Two step Nadia? comp A.Tsygankov 3?15
Related Website
John Biewen
Posted on September 09, 2006 at 12:58 PM | Permalink
Review of RN Documentary: A Conversation with James Meek
This is fine, smart radio, heady in the best sense. Through readings and conversation with the author, we enter the world of James Meek's novel about ideological extremists in the bleek landscape of Siberia. Meek has fresh and thought-provoking things to say about men and women (getting obsessed over abstractions tends to be a guy thing), about the American view of history post-9/11 (why should everybody assent that the world has changed because an awful act of violence struck Manhattan and Washington for a change as opposed to, say, Grozny?), and about the job of the fiction writer. Meek argues that what separates good novels from bad is not the quality of the writer's imagination but his or her willingness to tell the truth about human nature.
To Meek, that truth is as dark as a Siberian winter. The piece should come with a warning for the feint of heart in the audience. It includes a reading from the novel in which a character describes in careful, calm detail the slicing off of his penis by ideologues.