2024-09-17
34 分钟Mark Strong reads The Barber of Erice by Will Boast, the second shortlisted story for the 2024 BBC National Short Story Award, followed by an interview with the author on BBC Radio 4's Front Row Podcast presented and produced by Rick Woska
BBC sounds music radio podcasts hello and welcome back to the BBC short story podcast, where this week we're showcasing the five shortlisted stories from the 2024 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University.
Today we have the second shortlisted story, which comes from London based author will boast.
In his story the Barber of Erice, courage and friendship emerged from a clash of cultures in a sicilian village.
The reader is Mark Strong.
The barber of Erice by will boast, read by Mark Strong it started with the most miraculous haircut Giulio had ever seen.
Signora Azzaro had brought in her 13 year old son.
Every boy in erce wanted to look like a footballer, but this the sides had been brought down to near stubble, then textured in tight zigzags like lightning bolts.
There were even Julieu saw as he sat, the boy in the second chair, notches carved out of his slender eyebrows, also impossibly, in the shape of lightning.
Mitzika, Julia muttered.
Where did you go for this?
Signora Azzaro threw up her hands.
Two weeks from his confirmation and he looks like some Catania gangster.
You can fix it, can't you?
A salon entropani, maybe?
He doesn't tell me, Signora Azaro answered bitterly.
Just says a friend did it.
Perhaps there was some way to fix it.
But Julieu had the long, dull instincts of a man with a captive clientele.
He'd cut this boy and all the boys and men in Aerie chase so many times that their hair was just an eternal weed to be pruned.
As the clippers whirred, the boy scowled back at him in the mirror.