FINAL DRAFT on 2SER

Now known as 'The Bone Man of Kokoda', Kokichi Nishmura made a fateful promise to his dying comrades in PNG during the Second World War. Keeping up his end of the bargain meant spending 25 alone in the jungle digging for bones. This week on Final Draft it's all about keeping faith. We talk about Nishimura's pact with his biographer, Charles Happell; we follow Barack Obama's attempts to keep faith with his unusual family history and we follow the consequences of a promise made to the future in Monica McInerney's latest novel.

Charles Happell, 'The Bone Man of Kokoda', Macmillan
Barack Obama, 'Dreams From My Father', Text Publishing
Monica McInerney, 'Those Faraday Girls', Penguin

The lives of remarkable writers and the writing of remarkable lives are our subjects this week on Final Draft. We catch up with Luke Davies, and talk about his new novel, 'The God of Speed', in which an elderly Howard Hughes sits in a hotel room in London, unfolding his story of sex, money, speed and obsession. Najaf Mazari, an Afghan refugee and rugmaker, drops by with his friend, the Austalian writer, Robert Hillman, to talk about their new book, 'The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif', which tells Najaf's story of resilience and goodwill. And we learn how a very famous writer is at pains to have the last word on how his life's tales are remembered.

Luke Davies, 'The God of Speed', Allen and Unwin
J M Coetzee, 'Diary of a Bad Year', Text Publishing
Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman, 'The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif', Insight Publications

Women and history this week – women writing about it, making it, remembering it, and hiding it. Anna Clark reports the good, the bad and the unexpected from the chalkface about the way Aussie kids are being taught their history; we learn all about the elusive, enigmatic anthropologist Daisy Bates, and we dive into the hidden secrets in the pasts of both people and houses in Anne De Lisle's new novel.

Anna Clark, 'History's Children: History Wars in the Classroom', UNSW Press
Susanna De Vries, 'Desert Queen: The Many Lives and Loves of Daisy Bates', Harper Collins
Anne De Lisle, 'The Swim Club', Random House

Ever heard of book pirates? No? Well tune into Final Draft this week, me hearties, and learn all about it. Plus: the latest from the 'Queen of the Airport Novel', and a repeat of our interview with Don Watson from last week (a technical problem meant that broadcast listeners missed it first time round).

Join us as we talk with couple of charming veterans of Australian arts and letters. David Stratton reflects on a rich life lived in the cinema, recounted in his new memoir, and Don Watson joins us to talk about the marvellous paradoxes of the United States. We also find out about a charming idea: the PEN poem relay, a potent symbol of international co-operation in the name of freedom of expression, running parallel to the Olympic torch relay.

David Stratton, 'I Peed On Fellini', William Heinemann, $34.95
Don Watson, 'American Journeys', Knopf, $49.95

nb Due to a technical problem with the original broadcast of this edition of the show, the Don Watson interview will be re-broadcast on 14 April

Whether you agree with the famous Norweigan explorer, Roald Amundsen, who said that 'adventure is just bad planning' or you side with the British novelist, G K Chesterton, who claimed 'adventure is just inconvenience rightly considered', there's no denying the symbiotic relationship between writing and adventure. And this week on Final Draft, we get adventurous in all sorts of ways: we get up-to-date with the revamped version of Enid Blyton's five famous adventurers, with Dr Sue Page from the University of South Australia; we follow Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte on a series of military and artistic adventures, and we listen into to an excerpt of Rachel Le Rossignol's adventure in fantasy, 'Dream Players'.

Joe Bageant calls himself a 'socialist redneck'. With 'a foot in each ditch' he's written a fierce, funny, erudite and surprising book about life for the working poor in the United States. 'Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War' is a rollicking read and is a useful reminder that stereotypes are best checked at the door. And this week on Final Draft, we're all about unsettling stereotypes. We chat to Joe. We also get inspired, by Ursula Le Guin and Michael Chabon, to lance the snobby distinction between 'literature' and 'genre fiction'. And the Sydney writer, Aden Rolfe, drops by to treat us to a reading of one of his intriguing new prose-poems.

'Words, words ... mere words,' said Polonius. Well, the silly old codger clearly didn't know what he was talking about. Words are full of power, as this week's Final Draft testifies. We meet Dylan Peek, a remarkable young author who demonstrates the power of words to change one life ... all ten years of it. With academic Bernadette Brennan, we chat about the power of words to carry the fight for justice and social change. We go to war with Charlie Wilson to find out how words can capture the workings of raw power, and we get to grips with the power of words to live on, and on, in the hearts of their readers. Word up!

Dylan Peek, 'Xbox Goes Crazy'
Bernadette Brennan (ed), 'Just Words: Australian Authors Writing For Justice', University of Queensland Press, $32.95
George Crile, 'Charlie Wilson's War', Atlantic Books, $51.95

Like Shakespeare's Puck, we throw a girdle around the world. As we go a-globe-trotting, we stop off in the underworld of Bombay with Vikram Chandra, we peep into shadows, secrecy and espionage in ... Canberra, with Christopher Koch, and we touch base in New York to talk about the best new nonfiction coming out of the United States with Ira Glass.

Vikram Chandra, 'Sacred Games', Harper Collins, $47.95
Christopher Koch, 'The Memory Room', Random House, $32.95
Ira Glass (ed), 'The New Kings of Nonfiction', Penguin, $17.95

Awards season? Bah! Forget the Oscars and the Golden Globes; Final Draft dishes out the prizes that really matter. This week we roll out the red carpet and hand out the guernsies for the fabulous Australian novelist, Max Barry, the fiery, former Californian poet-laureate Al Young, the oddest book titles from last year, and the word of the year for 2007.

Max Barry, 'Syrup', Scribe Publications, $24.95
Al Young, 'A Dance for Militant Dilettantes' from 'Poetry on Record', vol. 3.

Nathanael Pepper, a Wotjobaluk man, was born in the Wimmera as the first pastoralists in Victoria were driving thousands and thousands of sheep and cattle into his homelands. In a world where everything - religion, land, law, life - was changed, Pepper sought to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. This week on Final Draft we meet Pepper's biographer, Robert Kenny, and explore this man's extraordinary life, and what we can learn from it about world we have inherited.

Robert Kenny, 'The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World', Scribe Publications, $39.95