Ahdaf Soueif - The Map of Love

Octavia Bright talks to Ragnar Jónasson about his shocking thriller, The Darkness.When Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is unceremoniously told she is being forced into early retirement, she is given the chance to work on one last Cold Case, anything she likes. The case s ...  Show more

Harriett Gilbert welcomes the French author Laurent Binet to the World Book Club studio to answer your questions about his acclaimed novel HHhH.The book tells the story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and the daring mission ...  Show more

Turkey's leading female novelist Elif Shafak discusses her novel The Forty Rules of Love.The novel is about finding love and is written in two strands. One is the friendship between a whirling dervish and the Sufi poet Rumi in 13th century Anatolia; the other is about a mother in ...  Show more

One of the world’s most multicultural cities, twentieth-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and ’30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a “modern” Egyptian. Women came to dominate the ...  Show more

In this afikra FWD, Hasheemah Afaneh talked about 'Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring 20s' by Raphael Cormack. Cormack unveils the rich histories of independent, enterprising women like vaudeville star Rose al-Youssef (who launched one of Cairo’s most important newsp ...  Show more

Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences today It is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. De ...  Show more