• The NEW Torchlight List

  • By: RNZ
  • Podcast

The NEW Torchlight List

By: RNZ
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  • Summary

  • Professor Jim Flynn talks with Wallace Chapman about his controversial list of the best modern books.
    (C) Radio New Zealand 2024
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Episodes
  • The New Torchlight List: Best Books & Authors

    The New Torchlight List: Best Books & Authors
    Nov 5 2016
    It's Jim's final countdown and he rates the authors from the very best, through to those he wants to read more of, promising authors, those not quite good enough, the unpromising - and the just plain awful. He tells Wallace he still loves reading - but he won't do another book like this again: "When you are recommended 400 books you often encounter an author like Knausgard who has been much hailed but you can't damn him without reading about four of his books. So you've read one book and you absolutely hate it and he kills your pleasure in reading for the next fortnight because you now have to go on reading four horrible books and I don't think I could put myself through that again."
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    14 mins
  • The New Torchlight List - Asia and the Middle East

    The New Torchlight List - Asia and the Middle East
    Oct 29 2016
    This chapter of The New Torchlight List takes in a big geographical area and a variety of cultures.
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    16 mins
  • The New Torchlight List: Africa

    The New Torchlight List: Africa
    Oct 22 2016
    Jim agrees with Wallace's love for Disgrace, by South African writer J.M. Coetzee - though Jim says Coetzee's "not brilliant". He describes the Cairo trilogy by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz as "a landmark work". Jim recommends Somalian writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali "for an unparalleled insight into what Islam means for those who interpret the Koran literally". She was subjected to female circumcision at the age of five and over the years turned away from Islam. Jim tells Wallace about the value of entering another culture in a novel: "You only know what human nature is capable of if you read what's happened to it in a variety of societies."
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    15 mins

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