Joe Dunthorne: Children of Radium
The Book Club · 2025-04-02
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is the poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, who is here to talk about his new non-fiction book Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance. In it, he describes how he criss-crossed Europe in search of the truth about his great-grandfather, a Jewish scientist who found himself working on chemical weapons for the Nazis. Joe talks to me about historical guilt, the accidents of fate and human psychology – and making comedy out of tragedy.
The Book Club
Literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented weekly by Sam Leith.
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