Listening

Press, 2 September 1980, Page 19

Listening

Book world The novelist,- Doris Lessing, first became known for her writings about Africa, where- she spent her childhood. In recent books she has turned elsewhere, even to other parts of the universe. Her latest novel is "The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four and Five,” and she talks on the 8.8. C. books programme today about the relief of taking “that small step out into space fiction” and how she sees the world with both "the insider’s eye and the outsider’s eye.” “8.8. C. World of Books,” Concert Programme, 7 p.m. ❖ ❖ ❖

A roundup of paper-, backs takes the 8.8. C. book programme to China and Africa. There is a book on Chinese art and another of true tales from Chinese history. Two of the three books from Africa come from Nigeria: a light satirical novel called “The Chicken Chasers,” and “The Madness of Didi,” by Obi Egbuna, about a man returning from England to his home in eastern Nigeria. The other African volume among the recently released paperbacks is “Luanda” by an Angolan called Jose Luandino Vieira who caused a scandal in the days of Portuguese colonialism when he won a prize with this book of stories about the people who live around the Angolan capital. Besant trial

In 1877 Annie Besant and- Charles Bradlaugh stood trial together jointly accused of publishing “a lewd, filthy, bawdy, and obscene book.” She was the estranged wife of a clergyman, and he was a liberal candidate for the British Parliament. The publication was a 40-page medical pamphlet on birth control, written by an American doctor in an effort. to lessen the poverty and suffering incurred by large, unwanted families, in the working class. A 8.8. C. programme on the National Programme at 7.30 p.m. tells the story of the trial and the effects it had on the people involved and the population at large. It is narrated by Edgar Lustgarten, and features Sarah Badel as Annie Besant and Wilfrid Carter as Charles Bradlaugh. Dorian Choir

The Auckland Dorian Choir, Peter Godfrey conducting, can be heard in a concert broadcast, direct from St Patrick’s Cathedral this evening. The choir can be heard with a string orchestra and leading New Zealand vocal soloists in music by Monteverdi, Durufle, Benjamin Britten, and Handel. The Handel work in the second half of the concert is ■ the Dixit Dominus'. Concert Programme, '