The Book Show
The Book Show
WAMC
Each week on The Book Show, host Joe Donahue interviews authors about their books, their lives and their craft. It is a celebration of both reading and writers.
The Book Show | Karl Ove Knausgaard – The School of Night
Few contemporary writers have examined the inner life with the intensity and candor of Karl Ove Knausgaard. His latest is “The School of Night.” In it, he interrogates memory, identity, art, and the meaning we try to impose on our lives.
Feb 10
27 min
The Book Show | George Saunders – Vigil
George Saunders is one of the most original voices in American fiction. His new novel, “Vigil,” follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, an afterlife usher summoned to guide an unrepentant oil tycoon toward death. Over one wild night, Saunders confronts power, greed, climate reckoning, and mercy itself.
Jan 27
27 min
The Book Show | Allison Russell – The Antidote [encore airing]
Karen Russell's latest, “The Antidote,” is a dust bowl novel and a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting that enacts the settler amnesia and omissions passed down from generation to generation.
Dec 30, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | Ron Chernow – Mark Twain
In his latest biography, “Mark Twain,” Ron Chernow brings to life the man known as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Chernow peels back the layers of this complex figure, showing us the man behind classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Innocents Abroad.”
Dec 23, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | Ann Packer – Some Bright Nowhere
Ann Packer’s newest novel, “Some Bright Nowhere,” marks a profound return after a decade: it tells the story of Eliot and Claire, married nearly forty years in a quiet Connecticut town, facing the toughest chapter of their lives when Claire’s long-running illness draws toward its end.
Dec 16, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | Patrick Ryan – Buckeye
In his newest novel, "Buckeye," Patrick Ryan explores the ways families hold together even as the past threatens to pull them apart. Moving between generations, Ryan explores how we inherit not just our parents’ habits and hopes, but their unfinished business.
Dec 10, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | Michael Connelly – The Proving Ground
Michael Connelly has long been a master at mapping the evolving landscape of crime and justice in America, and in his latest, "The Proving Ground," he turns his attention to one of the defining questions of the moment: what happens when artificial intelligence crosses dangerous ethical lines—and real people pay the price?
Nov 24, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | John Iriving – Queen Esther
John Irving has long been one of America’s most distinctive and beloved novelists. With his new novel, “Queen Esther,” Irving once again returns to the questions that have animated his career: What shapes a life? How do we carry the burdens of the past? And how does love anchor us through the most unpredictable turns?
Nov 18, 2025
27 min
The Book Show | Jeffrey Archer – End Game
Jeffrey Archer's novels have always balanced suspense with insight into the corridors of power. From “Cain and Abel” to “The Clifton Chronicles,” he investigates ambition, betrayal and redemption on an international scale. His latest, “End Game” is swift and elegant and full of moral complexity.
Nov 11, 2025
27 min
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