Charlotte Van den Broeck (12:00)

Imagine being an architect when your theatre collapses mid-performance in 1920s Washington or the designer of an eerily sinking swimming pool in your home town. Charlotte Van den Broeck, award-winning Belgian poet, goes in search of buildings that were fatal for their architects - architects who either killed themselves or are rumoured to have done so. The reason? Because the buildings they created were flawed; because of public disgrace; or because creativity inevitably has a dark side.

From a church with a twisted spire built in seventeenth-century France, and ranging across time and space whilst drawing on material from Hegel and Charles Darwin to art history, Van den Broeck asks: what is that strange life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?

Bold Ventures, a prize-winning and idiosyncratic book, breaks new ground in literary non-fiction and provides solace, consolation - and a note of caution - to anyone risking their hand at a creative act.

Translator David McKay
Part of New Dutch Writing, presented by the Dutch Foundation for Literature

In conversation with Sheena McDonald

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