World Book Club: Alaa Al Aswany

Nikki Bedi speaks to Sudanese Russian director Suzannah Mirghani about her latest film, Cotton Queen and discusses this week’s cultural highlights with critic Hanna Flint: Tom Cruise and Oscar winning Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu on their new film, Digger Oscar wi ...  Show more

In Berlin, three artists have come together to make some unusual music. They’re not a regular rock band in a commercial recording studio, but in an experimental space, where rare vintage synthesisers from Cold War East Germany sit alongside contemporary instruments. They’re conti ...  Show more

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany about his latest novel which charts the country's social upheaval through the prism of Cairo's elite Automobile Club of Egypt. The foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson looks back at the Egyptian re ...

We talk about the career of the best-selling Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany – who like many other artists is on the outs with the country’s military regime now. Also, about Shakespeare productions and censorship in Gulf countries; and book reviews in the age of online algorithm ...  Show more

Raphael Cormack discussed his new book Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20's.Midnight in Cairo tells the thrilling story of Egypt’s interwar nightlife and entertainment industry through the lives of its pioneering women. Introducing an eccentric cast of characters, ...  Show more

Mai Al-Nakib talks about her novel "An Unlasting Home" which traces Kuwait's rise from a pearl-diving backwater to its reign as a thriving cosmopolitan city to the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion.Mai Al-Nakib is a Kuwaiti writer and academic. She was born in Kuwait and spent her ...  Show more