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Two authors at the top of their game: Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch reveals how his award winning novel Prophet Song came into being and Booker longlisted author Karen Jennings' complicated love letter to South Africa.

The Irish writer Paul Lynch is the reigning Booker winner and won the prize for his beautiful, brutal fifth novel Prophet Song. It's about a civil war in modern-day Ireland that has echoes with other conflicts around the world. Paul Lynch tells Claire Nichols that he wants readers to be transported by his fiction and why his biggest fear as a writer is mediocrity.

South African author Karen Jennings shares her hopes for the future of the rainbow nation. Crooked Seeds is Karen's seventh book and follows her 2021 Booker Prize longlisted novel An Island. In Crooked Seeds, she paints a portrait of a crumbling country. The main character - a middle aged white woman - feels like she's been left behind since the historic 1994 elections that brought an end to Apartheid. She's bitter and resentful and can only move forward by confronting the past.

Jeanette Winterson asks how AI will give new meaning to ghost stories and Kate Grenville reflects on a lifetime of writing and how accepting failure has been key to her success.

Jeanette Winterson is best known for her novels Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Stone Gods and Frankissstein. Her long fascination with mortality, religion and technology have come together in a new book of short stories, Night Side of the River (Jonathan Cape), which considers what technology might mean for the future of ghost stories. First broadcast 2 October 2023

Celebrated Australian author Kate Grenville (Secret River, A Room Made of Leaves) won the prestigious Orange Prize for her novel The Idea of Perfection in 2001, that prize is now called the Women's Prize for Fiction and Kate is again shortlisted for the award with her latest novel, Restless Dolly Maunder (Text), her fictional biography of her grandmother. Producer, Sarah L'Estrange visited Kate in her Melbourne worker's cottage to discuss her writing career. First broadcast 21 August 2023

American author Celeste Ng shares how her latest novel Our Missing Hearts explores one of her deepest fears. 

Celeste Ng is known for her dark realist novels, Everything I Never Told You, and Little Fires Everywhere (which was adapted to the screen in 2020).

Our Missing Hearts is set in a dystopian, near future America, where anti-Asian sentiment has peaked, books are disappearing from the shelves, and children are being taken away from their families.

It's a chilling world but as Claire Nichols discovers at this Sydney Writers' Festival event, there is also hope in art, poetry, and family.

Celeste Ng also discusses book banning in the US and you can find out more about this worrying trend on The Book Show's new series Banned Books.

Shankari Chandran's follow up to her Miles Franklin award winning book, British author Stuart Turton's complicated murder mystery and Julie Janson's ironically named novel Compassion.

Shankari Chandran won the 2023 Miles Franklin for her novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens. Her new novel Safe Haven asks readers to confront the reality of Australia's immigration detention system: the lives of the detainees, the guards, the doctors, and the communities that welcome asylum seekers, sometimes to then see them taken away.

British writer Stuart Turton has a reputation for risky ideas. His hit novel The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was described as 'Gosford Park meets Groundhog Day'. His latest The Last Murder at the End of the World is also a murder mystery with a twist – it's set on an island that is home to the last remaining humans on the planet and every person on the island has a voice in their head, who is also the narrator of this story. It's a wild, propulsive ride.

Julie Janson is a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation. Her first, historical novel Benevolence, was about a young Aboriginal woman growing up in the New South Wales colony. Now Julie has written a sequel Compassion, inspired by her great-great grandmother.

One of Colm Toibin's most beloved books is Brooklyn and now he's written a sequel. In Long Island, the characters are 20 years older but they haven't let go of their secrets.

One of the Irish writer Colm Tóibín's best loved books is Brooklyn. Published in 2009, it's about Eilis, a young woman who leaves Ireland for America in the 1950s. It was longlisted for the Booker, won the Costa Novel Award and was adapted to the screen in 2015. Now there's a sequel, called Long Island, (Picador) set years later in the 70s when Eilis is again faced with a family dilemma.

Australian author Michelle Johnston takes you deep into the basement of the Perth hospital where she works and writes and which was the inspiration for the setting of her novel, Tiny Uncertain Miracles (first broadcast 6 February 2023).

And in the final episode of Banned Books, the focus is again on Iran but there's an Australian connection. 

Iran's Kafka like book censorship is causing authors to flee, including writer Shokoofeh Azar who now lives in Australia.

Banned Books is a new series that looks at what's driving book bans worldwide. 

In this last episode, writer Shokoofeh Azar who now lives in Australia and is the author of The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree which is banned in Iran.

Guests: 
Shokoofeh Azar - Iranian born, Australian based journalist and author The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, shortlisted for the International Booker and Stella Prize.
Alireza Abiz - Iranian born, UK based scholar, poet and translator. He's the author of Censorship of Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Politics and Culture since 1979
Nassim Khadem - ABC journalist. Provided reading from The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree