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When he was a boy, Carlo Gébler would arrive home from school to hear the sound of typing coming from the shed at the bottom of his garden. This was where Carlo’s mother, the writer Edna O’Brien, went to write her novels.

Later, when he lay in bed at night, Carlo would again hear the sound of typing – this time coming from the downstairs front room - where his father, Ernest Gébler, wrote plays for television.

Now 68 and with his own distinguished career as an author, Carlo wants to know why the children of writers so often follow their parent’s footsteps into literature.

American writer Emily Ruskovich is the daughter of poet, Mike Ruskovich. Novelist Tania Unsworth's father Barry won the Booker Prize in 1992. As the author of Catch 22, Erica Heller's father Joseph needs little introduction.

Together they share with Carlo their personal experience of literary lineage as he asks if it's simply an iron law that the apple rarely falls far from the tree - or if the truth is something much more complex.

Producer: Conor Garrett