Throughout this week, our production of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as the 15minute drama on Woman’s Hour. Produced by Polly Thomas, it’s is an abridgement of the iconic German novel of the same name by the Nobel Prize winning author, Heinrich Boll.
Written in the mid 1970s, it is a damning exploration of the corrosive impact of tabloid journalism on one young woman, tackling big issues of press freedom, responsibility and police tactics.
Based on real events in the life of Heinrich Boll, the subtitle of the book is “how violence develops and where it can lead.” The role of the press and its effect on the lives of ordinary people is very relevant today.
Recorded on location in Berlin with German actors, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum features a soundtrack of 1970s Krautrock from bands such as Can, Neu, La Dusseldorf and Ash Ra Tempel.
You can listen to each episode on BBC Radio 4 from Monday-Friday at 10:45am, or you can catch up on all the episodes for up to 7 days after broadcast on the Radio 4 website.