World Book Club BBC World Service

Toronto is a bustling city on Lake Ontario which is growing at an astonishing rate. Almost a third of Torontonians have arrived in the last decade and more than half were born outside of Canada. The city’s Mohawk name is , which means “the place on the water where the trees are standing".
Noah Richler explores the fictional landscape of the city with four of its exciting writers from different generations and backgrounds; Catherine Hernandez, Adrianna Chartrand, Don Gillmor and Deepa Rajagopalan who all join him in front of a lively audience at The House of Anansi Bookshop.

Kevin Kwan discusses his internationally best-selling novel, Crazy Rich Asians, with readers from around the world.
Chinese-American academic Rachel Chu lives a modest and happy life with her boyfriend and fellow academic Nick. But when Nick invites her home to Singapore to meet the family, everything changes – starting with the first class flights.
Saturated with wildly wealthy and deliciously dysfunctional super-elites, this ironic and funny rom-com makes a perfect escapist summer read.
(Photo: Kevin Kwan is seen in midtown on 24 August, 2023, New York City. Credit: Raymond Hall/Getty Images)

In Miriam Toews’s novel, Women Talking, the women of a remote Mennonite colony are hold secret meetings to talk about the crimes of the men who they live alongside. After years of being told that they were suffering from hysterical delusions, the women “came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.”
Women Talking is a response to the real life events on a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia between 2005 and 2009.
Miriam Toews talks to World Book Club readers in Toronto and around the world about her unique and powerful story about the power of language and solidarity.
(Photo: Miriam Toews, Canadian author at the Hay Festival, 4 June, 2022 in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Credit: David Levenson/Getty Images)

Percival Everett will be discussing his Booker-shortlisted novel The Trees. This powerful and fiercely funny satire centring on revenge and racial justice in America shifts genres between police procedural, magical realism and horror with wit and consummate skill. Percival Everett addresses some of America’s darkest history with an unusual mix of playfulness and political seriousness.

Award-winning Australian novelist Charlotte Wood joins Harriett Gilbert to answer questions from readers around the world about her novel, The Weekend.
It's a story of grief and friendship; three women meet to clear their deceased friend’s beach house and find themselves uncovering secrets and stirring up memories.
(Image: Charlotte Wood. Photo credit: Carly Earl.)

Multi award-winning novelist Ann Patchett will be discussing The Dutch House.
A dark modern fairytale set against the very real world of post-WWII Philadelphia, tracing the love between a brother and sister, their vanishing mother, distant father and jealous stepmother. Ann Patchett tells the story of a family over five decades with a finely balanced mixture of wit and heartbreak.
(Image: Ann Patchett. Photo credit: Emily Dorio.)