Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with Remarkable Writers

by Ramona Koval

357 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Ramona Koval has made long interviews with significant writers her signature. She is familiar to ABC Radio audiences through her long and varied career on air. Listeners will remember her as the presenter of the RN Drive program and as the morning presenter on Melbourne’s 3LO (now 774 ABC Melbourne) through the late 1980s and early 1990s.

She became a fixture in the literary world after joining ABC Radio National’s Books and Writing in 1994. Ramona now presents The Book Show, introduced by ABC Radio National in 2006 to consolidate its various book programs.

A writer herself, Ramona has published several books, including a novel, Samovar, and a cookbook Jewish Cooking, Jewish Cooks. She has written for many newspapers and international journals, and her interviews have been published in book form. Her latest collection of Radio National interviews is Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with Remarkable Writers, published by ABC Books.

Reviews

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of interviews with 'remarkable authors' by Ramona Koval, both as interviewer and then as editor, is bursting with things to think about, from the role of the novel to the nature of truth; from the often deadly textures of everyday life to the recurring realisations of individual writers that power corrupts.
The ideas discussed by Koval and the writers, mostly at Writers Festivals but sometimes in telephone interviews, are what makes this book such a riveting read. The chapters are fairly short, making them manageable as bedtime or bus trip reading.
Having the interviews available in book form means you can come back to them over and over again, as I know I will.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I haven't really finished it. I've dipped into it, and I always meant to go back and finish it off, but I never have...
It's just not the same as listening to a good interview.