#ALICE BROOKES TV#
Suzy Klein, the head of arts and classical music TV at the BBC, said the list was “a real opportunity to discover stories from across continents and taking us through the decades, books that we might never have otherwise read, and reading authors whose work deserves a spotlight to be shone on it.” The Big Jubilee Read campaign will include events and activities in libraries and bookshops, with resources available for reading groups across the country. Life of Pi by Yann Martel, whose stage and screen adaptations won Olivier awards and Oscars, is on the 1992-2001 list.Įarlier titles include A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul, The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and Derek Walcott’s epic poem Omeros. The winners of the Booker prize in the past two years – Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and The Promise by Damon Galgut – are included in the final decade. The Big Jubilee Read, created by BBC Arts and The Reading Agency, embraces prize-winning books such as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo and Seamus Heaney’s 1966 Nobel prize-winning poetry collection Death of a Naturalist. “The Golden Notebook … was a huge influence on me, but we had to drop some … There were two books for every place.” In the past two years, Rowling has faced criticism over her rejection of the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of the word “women”, with some accusing her of transphobia.Ī number of high-profile books, such as Doris Lessing’s 1962 novel The Golden Notebook, also failed to make the final list, said Nasta. “In terms of the space over that decade, which was the 90s when more and more books were coming out across the Commonwealth, it was decided to make space for a book that was good and equally well received.”