Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval is one of Australia’s most loved literary figures, thanks to her many years ruling the Radio National airwaves as the host of The Book Show. She’s famous for shining the spotlight on her bookish guests, at the ABC and as the host of The Monthly’s book club.

In her new book, Bloodhound, the interviewer extraordinaire gets personal, inviting us on an intimate journey to track down her father.

Ramona’s parents were Holocaust survivors who resettled in Melbourne. As a child, she suspected that the man who raised her was not her biological father. In the 1990s, long after her mother’s death, she decided to discover the truth – and a phone call led to a photograph in the mail, tea with strangers, and travel that spanned a meeting with a horse whisperer in tropical Queensland, rural Poland, and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

In conversation with Hilary Harper, discover how Ramona uncovered the truth, and why it was so important to her.