Open Book - 14/06/2009

Mariella Frostrup speaks to the American crime writer George Pelecanos about his new novel, The Way Home, an exploration of shifting loyalties between a father and his drop-out son against the backdrop of the worlds of crime and punishment in his native Washington. He also talks about how his role as screenwriter on the hit American television drama The Wire has influenced his fiction. Mariella looks back at the highs and lows of the Palestinian Festival of Literature with Egyptian novelist and chair of Palfest, Adhaf Soueif. The Festival brought literary figures including Michael Palin and Deborah Moggach to the West Bank. Mariella also speaks to author Liz Jenson about her new novel, The Rapture, set in the near future, in which a therapist attempts to treat a young female psychiatric patient who appears to be predicting the cataclysmic global disasters which the world is experiencing.