Sophie Roell, Editor

Sophie Roell is co-founder and editor of Five Books. Previously she worked as a journalist in London, Beijing, Shanghai and New York. As a financial reporter, she covered the early years of the Chinese stock markets and the transition of its economy after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 tour of the south. She wrote about the North Korean economy from Pyongyang in 2001.

She studied modern history as an undergraduate at Oxford and, after travelling the world as a reporter for five years, took the Master’s in Regional Studies-East Asia at Harvard University.  This wonderfully flexible program insists on at least one East Asian language and some courses on East Asia, but leaves plenty of room to roam about the university taking courses on random subjects. Five Books, set up in 2009, is an attempt to continue that experience.

Below, you’ll find Sophie’s Five Books interviews with experts. Her own recommendations, normally nonfiction, are here. She also reads a lot of mysteries.

Interviews by Sophie Roell

Harry Potter Books in Order

We’ve listed all the Harry Potter books in the order they were written below, from the first book, The Philosopher’s Stone (aka The Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States), which appeared in 1997, to the final book in the series, The Deathly Hallows, a decade later, in 2007.

The Best 20th-Century Arab Novels, recommended by Raphael Cormack

Whether it’s a tragic novel set in post-indepedence Sudan or picaresque stories about a Palestinian living in Israel after 1948, many of the key Arab novels of the 20th century are available in English. Raphael Cormack, a professor of Arabic studies at Durham University, talks us through five novels from a variety of countries that explore different themes and trends in the evolution of the novel in the Arabic-speaking world.