FINAL DRAFT on 2SER

Food for your brain - a weekly half-hour of browsing and grazing in the world of books and writing from Radio 2SER FM, Sydney.

FD 2008/05/05 - Keeping Faith: Barack Obama, the Bone Man of Kokoda, Monica McInerney

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May 05, 2008 05:48 PM PDT

Now known as 'The Bone Man of Kokoda', Kokichi Nishmura made a fateful promise to his dying comrades in PNG during the Second World War. Keeping up his end of the bargain meant spending 25 alone in the jungle digging for bones. This week on Final Draft it's all about keeping faith. We talk about Nishimura's pact with his biographer, Charles Happell; we follow Barack Obama's attempts to keep faith with his unusual family history and we follow the consequences of a promise made to the future in Monica McInerney's latest novel.

Charles Happell, 'The Bone Man of Kokoda', Macmillan
Barack Obama, 'Dreams From My Father', Text Publishing
Monica McInerney, 'Those Faraday Girls', Penguin

Podcast Summary

Final Draft is a weekly stroll in the world of books, writing, ideas and language. It's also a space on the air where the big names of arts and culture sit cheek-by-jowl with those just beginning to make their mark. Produced in the hope of inspiring generous, open-minded reading and  conversation, the show has a distinct flavour of Sydney, as well as generous sprinkles of guests and goodies from around Australia and the world too.

Each week we serve up a mix of interviews with writers and industry figures, reviews of new, classic and cult titles, readings of original work, short features and documentaries, and news about literary events, trends, prizes and publishing opportunities.

Past guests include novelists, film-makers, journalists, historians, illustrators, scientists, publishers, critics, poets and producers. A few examples: Vikram Chandra, Tom Griffiths, Tristan Clark, Jennifer Mills, Ira Glass, Luke Davies, Richard J Frankland, Alice Pung, L K Holt, Max Barry, Bernadette Brennan, Don Watson, Jane Gleeson-White, Alan Parkinson, Maria Tumarkin, Susanna Lobez, Alex Miller, John Hirst, Naldo Rei, David Stratton, Tina Matthews, Samantha Faulkner, Ben Garcia, Joe Bageant, Lollie Barr, Jonathan Balcombe, Heather O'Neill, Jeanette Hoorn, Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman, etc, etc.

The show is produced at the 2SER FM studios in Sydney by Benedict Taylor, Kimberley Forsyth, Shamin Fernando, Ben Falkenmire, Angela Welsh, Lesley Branagan and Paul Kildea.

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