Nights for Tuesday 22 August 2017

7:12 Novelist Elizabeth Kostova

Elizabeth Kostova is an American author whose first novel, The Historian, sold three million copies. She's in New Zealand for the first time ever to promote her latest book The Shadow Land, a contemporary novel set in Bulgaria.

A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi—and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes.

 

7:30 The Sampler

In The Sampler this week Nick Bollinger discusses the big-production pop of Nicole Atkins, a fresh set of Americana from David Rawlings, the reissue of a 70s classic from Kiwi psych-rockers Space Farm and a twang-tastic debut from Wellington guitarist Chris Armour.

8:12 Nights' Pundit - Dillon Mayhew

Dillon joins Brian Crump to talk about Maryam Mirzakhani who was the first woman and the first Iranian to win the Fields medal -  considered to be the preeminent prize in mathematics -  "for her outstanding contributions to the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces".

8:30 Window on the World

Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world but incredibly, around four in five Venezuelans live in poverty. The BBC's South America correspondent, Katy Watson, went to cover the unfolding political and economic crisis in Venezuela and found a country divided.

9:07 Tuesday Feature

Jim Bolger and Tamati Kruger talk about Tuhoe and Parihaka treaty settlements, truth and reconciliation, and how their life experience has affected how the discharge of their public roles. Wena Harawira is in the chair for this event, recorded in front of an audience at the City Gallery Wellington in association with the major exhibition Colin McCahon: On Going Out with the Tide.

10:17 Late Edition

A roundup of today's RNZ News and feature interviews as well as Dateline Pacific from RNZ International.

11:07 Worlds of Music

Trevor Reekie hosts a weekly music programme celebrating an eclectic mix of 'world' music, fusion and folk roots. Tonight includes music from Belgium, Brazil, Senegal, a classic Kiwi single from 1994 and later in the program we include an interview with New York based film director Jeff Lieberman that traces the tumultuous life of Eunice Waymon, later known as Nina Simone, one of the most remarkable musical artists of the 20th century who was born on February 21, 1933.