The Dutch army captain whose unit secured Tuzla airbase for the incoming UN aid in 1994 talks about the books he kept with him in Bosnia and the inspiration for his Yugoslav novel, King of Tuzla. Hear Arnold recite the title poem from his poetry collection, Yugoslav Requiem.
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Italian literary giant Dacia Maraini is the multi-awardwinning author of more than 50 books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and critical essays. Her works have been adapted for stage and screen, often directed by herself. Maraini founded the literary review Tempo di Letteratura and an all-women’s theatre group, Teatro della Maddalena. She was a key theorist and activist in the Italian feminist movement of the 1970s. She chooses magical Italian literature.
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Rated by the British Library as among the top ten foreign poets currently based in London, Hasan-Zadeh is one of the most exciting voices in contemporary poetry. Her collection On Wings Over the Horizon, translated into English in 2002 by Richard McKane, drew comparisons with Anna Akhmatova and Maria Tsvetayeva.
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Syed Ashfaqul Haque is Chief News Editor at The Daily Star, the largest circulating English language daily newspaper in Bangladesh. Ashfaqul began his career as an apprentice subeditor at The Daily Star nearly 20 years ago, when the newspaper was a year old. In 2009 his investigative report on corruption in imports won the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Investigative Journalism Award, the Unesco-Bangladesh Journalism Award and the Dhaka Reporters Unity Award for best economic investigative report. Ashfaqul talks to FiveBooks about his nation’s struggle for independence, the repression of journalists and his five favourite books about Bangladesh.
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Robert Service is Professor of Russian Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford. His research interests cover Russian history from the late 19th century to the present day and he has written numerous books on the subject. Nowadays he is focusing on Russia in its international framework. He is currently working on the geopolitics of the Russian Revolution as well as a study of the end of the Cold War. He talks to the Browser about the books that led to his passion and the importance of analysing the causes and outcomes of political processes.
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Nabeel Yasin is one of Iraq’s most famous poets. His poems had him branded an enemy of the state under Saddam Hussein. He left Iraq for England 30 years ago with his wife and young son and continued to write and publish poetry from exile. Now he’s returned to his country and ran for prime minister in this month’s elections. ‘In our legacy here in Iraq we have some ideas about the conscience and duty of the state,’ he says. ‘Which should be to give happiness to the citizens, as numerous religious leaders have told us. For me there can be no kind of enlightenment without civil society.’
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Simon Young is the author of four books and his writing has appeared in History Today, the Spectator, and the Guardian. He combines a commitment to serious history, especially that of the medieval Celts, with a desire to communicate Dark Age history to the general public. He lives in Florence.
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Nick Havely is an eminent scholar on Dante, English-Italian literary traditions and late medieval literature. He is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, and is a widely published author on subjects concerning Dante and medieval writing. He is currently working on a study of Dante in the English-Speaking World from the Fourteenth Century to the Present for which he has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship.
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Peter Lilley was Margaret Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Trade and Industry 1990-1992 and was Secretary of State for Social Security 1992-1997. He was Member of Parliament for St Albans from 1983-1997 and, following boundary changes in 1997, he became MP for Hitchin & Harpenden. He chaired the Globalisation and Global Poverty Policy Group, advising Bob Geldof, which reported in July 2007. He tells FiveBooks that Samuel Johnson, man of letters and author of the 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, was not a hard-hearted Tory caricature, but a champion of the poor and enslaved.
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Sara Wheeler is a London-based writer who has written books on the Antarctic and the Arctic. She spent seven months in Antarctica as writer in residence with the US Polar Program. She tells FiveBooks about the uplifting grandeur of the Polar regions and her love affair with humanity.
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