ZB ZB
Sport
100 Years of ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Whitcoulls Recommends: The Correspondent and The Girl with the Seven Lives

Author
Newstalk ZB,
Publish Date
Sun, 9 Aug 2026, 12:55pm
(Photo / File)
(Photo / File)

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. This was actually released last year, but has had huge word of mouth enthusiasm for many, many readers and was voted onto the new Whitcoulls Top 100 last month. It’s now out in a second format and is the story of a woman’s life told through letters which she writes to a number of people important to her - some of whom are well known writers with whom she has an affinity, such as Ann Patchett, Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry - but also letters to her friends, her son, her brother and many others. It’s warm, illuminating of a life well lived and I adored it. 

The Girl with the Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup. He was the author of Q and A which was made into the wildly successful movie Slumdog Millionaire, and he’s back with a similarly quirky story about Devi, a young woman being held at ransom by a masked man who insists that over the course of a single day she recounts the seven very different episodes in her life for which he holds her to blame, whilst threatening to sell her off to the highest bidder as people affected by her various actions over the course of her life seek revenge. It’s cleverly constructed and tells a very Indian story of the many lives lived by one woman.

LISTEN ABOVE

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you