Sometimes the cultural divide between the U.S. and UK is staggering:<\/p>\n
\nBBC<\/span> Radio 3 is to air a new play by veteran dramatist Mike Walker, about a Russian journalist arrested by the KGB<\/span>, as the centrepiece of its autumn drama line-up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThe station has given the green light to Walker’s new play “Babel’s Tower,” inspired by the writings of Russian journalist and playwright, Isaac Babel, and recently released KGB<\/span> files detailing his imprisonment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Babel’s Tower” stars Sir Antony Sher, Robert Glenister and Stephen Noonan. The play tells of the last days of Babel, the Russian war correspondent and screenwriter who fell foul of the KGB<\/span>, and imagines him being interrogated after his arrest in 1939.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Babel’s Tower” also dramatises the journalist and writer thinking of characters from his best-known collections of stories, including Jewish gangsters fighting over Odessa in The Odessa Tales, and the Red Army cavalry he rode with as a correspondent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In addition, the fall line-up includes an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake<\/i> and “Seven Wonders of the Divided World,” which is “written by seven international artists . . . about living near political barriers.”<\/p>\n