Front Row - 09/12/2008

Tomorrow Stockholm hosts the annual prize giving for Nobel laureates. This year the Literature prize was won by the French writer Jean Marie Gustave Le Clezio. The Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, was reported as having criticised US writers for being too insular so Front Row asked a selection of US writers and critics for their response to this claim - we hear from the novelists John Updike and Toni Morrison, playwright Edward Albee and literary critic Harold Bloom. Multiple award-winning children's author, Cornelia Funke, was once described by Time Magazine as 'the German JK Rowling' and her fantasy novels regularly feature in international best-seller lists. One of them, Inkheart, has just been made into a film - starring Brendan Fraser, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, and Andy Serkis. Inkheart is the tale of a man who's so skilled at reading stories that characters from them spring into real-life. Unfortunately there's a drawback: whenever a fictional character comes to life, someone from the real world is sucked into the book to replace them… Children's author Jamila Gavin and Mark Lawson review the film and assess how successfully it captures the spirit of the original book. Damian Kelleher selects the year’s books for 8 - 14 year olds French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard was taught by the wife of Olivier Messiaen. As he prepares to play in a concert marking the 100th anniversary of Messiaen's birth, Aimard discusses the need to keep playing contemporary classical music and reveals the programme he has chosen as the director for next year's Aldeburgh festival.