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Episode details

World Service,28 Jul 1998,28 mins

James Kelman's short stories

Meridian

Available for over a year

A review of the short story collection The Good Times from the Scottish author of the Booker Prize-winning How Late It Was, How Late. The critic Maya Jaggi talks about Kelman's use of his working-class Glaswegian background and language. Also on the programme: the legacy of Russian writer Vladimir Dudintsev; Northern Irish writer, journalist and screenwriter Ronan Bennett on his novel The Catastrophist; Trinidad-born Canadian writer André Alexis on his novel Childhood and are self-help books worth it?

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