On The Book Show, Sinead Gleeson explores how three authors have retold, reworked and recreated fairytale and classic fiction and what it is that keeps writers returning to particular themes and motifs.
Eoin Colfer & Dr Who
We celebrate the 50 year anniversary of Dr Who with Eoin Colfer. The programme first appeared on our screen on November 23, 1963 and has been revived, reworked and rereleased in many forms since.
Eoin Colfer wrote an e-short for the Puffin/Dr Who e-short anthology. All eleven are published online today.
A Big Hand For The Doctor
London, 1900. The First Doctor is missing both his hand and his granddaughter, Susan. Faced with the search for Susan, a strange beam of soporific light, and a host of marauding Soul Pirates intent on harvesting human limbs, the Doctor is promised a dangerous journey into a land he may never forget…
Eoin Colfer’s new book is The Reluctant Assassin
www.eoincolfer.com
Margaret Atwood
Sinead talks to Margaret Atwood about fairytales motifs, speculative fiction and dystopia
Atwood is regards as one of Canada’s finest living writers. She is a poet, novelist, story writer, essayist, and environmental activist. Sinead talk to her about fairytale motifs in her work, the search for the perfect society and dystopian fiction.
And Zoë Comyns visits an exhibition in the aptly named Flood Gallery in Dublin. The exhibition is curate by Michelle Horrigan and inspired by Margaret Atwood’s The Year of The Flood.
Picture: A Saint for Margaret Atwood by Tom Fitzgerald.
Michelle Browne / Mike Cooter / Benjamin De Burca / Tom Fitzgerald / Zoe Fothergill / Clea van der Grijn / Mark McGreevy.
14 November – 7 December 2013
The book The Year of The Flood focuses on a small community of survivors of a biological catastrophe referred to as the ‘waterless flood’ and forms part of Atwood’s Oryx and Crake trilogy.
In this alternative reality, human rituals are reconfigured, creating situations that are not so much fantastical as eerily familiar and the exhibition interprets these themes.
Jonathan Coe and Gulliver
Jonathan Coe is best known for What a Carve Up and The Rotter’s Club. Sinead spoke to him about his first work for children – a reworking of Gulliver’s Travels as part of the Save the Story series.
It’s a library of 10 books edited by Alessandro Baricco. He invited writers such as Umberto Eco and Dave Eggers to rework stories like The Bethrothed and Captain Nemo. The aim; to save great stories from oblivion by retelling them for a new, younger generation.
The Save the Story series is published by Pushkin Children’s Books.
