The NEW Torchlight List

Jim Flynn is a world expert on human intelligence, and the author of many ground-breaking books on intelligence, philosophy and politics. He came from a poor family and owes all his success to reading… Read more Audio

Jim Flynn discusses North American authors and tells Wallace Chapman that everyone must read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. He also highly rates Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, but Wallace and Jim… Read more Audio

Jim and Wallace discuss South American writers, including the politics and the passion reflected in the great writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - recommending the memorable Love in the Time of Cholera… Read more Audio

Some of Jim's favourite writers feature in this episode - V.S. Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro who, he says, is "perhaps the greatest novelist of our generation. His work is going to make him one of few… Read more Audio

Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss modern Irish literature. Jim rates John Banville's "wonderful style", but is less enamoured with John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The sex in Edna… Read more Audio

Jim Flynn tells Wallace Chapman that Italian Umberto Eco's best work is The Name of the Rose but this comes with a warning as Eco "loves to demonstrate his learning. The plot is interrupted by long… Read more Audio

Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss Australasian literature.

Wallace takes on Jim over Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries - too long, says Jim. Not so, says Wallace. Jim says Catton can write but she… Read more Audio

Jim agrees with Wallace's love for Disgrace, by South African writer J.M. Coetzee - though Jim says Coetzee's "not brilliant". He describes the Cairo trilogy by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib… Read more Audio

This chapter of The New Torchlight List takes in a big geographical area and a variety of cultures. Read more Audio

It's Jim's final countdown and he rates the authors from the very best, through to those he wants to read more of, promising authors, those not quite good enough, the unpromising - and the just plain… Read more Audio