World

What books should we read to understand China—its culture, its history? British-Chinese journalist, author and activist Xinran picks five to get started with, including the book believed by many to be the greatest Chinese novel ever written. (You can also read this interview in Chinese by clicking here.)

Europe should be run for all Europeans and not just the French and German banks, argues the author of European Spring, Philippe Legrain. He recommends the best books on Europe.

The writer and historian Ian Buruma selects five Western perspectives of the East, including a novel of colonial India, a travelogue of disappearing Japan, and the collection of essays that lifted the veil on Mao's China.

The historian and biographer of London Peter Ackroyd picks five books that shine a light on parts of this vast, complex and confusing city where, he says, pathos and pantomime meet.

The author explains the allure of desert nations, through a discussion of books including Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger and Sultan In Oman by Jan Morris

Travelling to China? What are the best books to read to get a more in-depth understanding of this complex country? Longtime Beijing resident and New Yorker writer Evan Osnos picks some of his favourites.

Journalist and author Edward Lucas gives an excoriating critique of Putinism and explains how Russia's amoral present is rooted in a failure to come to terms with its past.

The much-travelled writer and broadcaster Charles Glass tells us about misunderstandings and misadventures of Americans in foreign lands.

Before the era of nation states, the great Levantine cities of Beirut, Alexandria and Smyrna experienced a golden age, as the author of Levant, Philip Mansel, explains

Britain is a bewilderingly motley nation of phlegmatic grumblers, says the author and editor Matthew Engel – a seaside resort-going, class-conscious people haunted by loss of empire, and we can’t even agree on what the country is called