Yasmina Khadra - The Swallows of Kabul

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

The Palace of Dreams is a novel from 1981 that is ostensibly set in the 19th century Ottoman empire, but the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare cleverly smuggles in thinly veiled criticism of the totalitarian state presided over by Enver Hoxha. The book was duly banned shortly after p ...  Show more

A decade after the uprisings that changed the political landscape of many countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Kim Chakanetsa looks at what impact the Arab uprisings had on the lives of women in Egypt and Syria.

Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-American author and ...

It was just a year ago that the U.S. withdrew its troops from Afghanistan. On that date, Nahid Shahalimi, an Afghan female writer living in Germany, realized that she needed to hurry to record the stories of prominent Afghan women who soon would try to escape their country, or st ...  Show more

With James Naughtie.Khaled Hosseini talks about his global bestselling novel, The Kite Runner with a group of invited readers.The book describes how the happiness of an afternoon's kite flying competition in late-1970s Kabul is broken when young Amir fails to help his best friend ...  Show more