Books that shaped how I see the region, the craft of journalism, and the stories in between — each with a note on why it stayed with me.
this month’s pick
By Scott Anderson | Published by Doubleday
Brilliantly brought to life by Scott Anderson, this behind-the-scenes narrative reveals how the Iranian Revolution was as world-shattering an event as the French and Russian revolutions, and how its repercussions are still felt around the world today.
History
By Svetlana Alexievich | Published By Random House
An oral history of the children who lived through World War II – dozens of voices recalling how war shaped a generation, from the Nobel Prize-winning chronicler of Soviet life.
Journalism
By Ronan Farrow | Published By Little, Brown and Company
The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into serial abusers and the machinery of spies, lawyers and media power that protected them – reporting that helped ignite the #MeToo reckoning.
Fiction
By Elif Shafak | Published By Bloomsbury Publishing
In the minutes after her death, an Istanbul outcast relives the life that led her there – a tender, defiant novel of friendship on society’s margins, shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Journalism
By David E. McCraw | Published By All Points Books
The New York Times’ newsroom lawyer recounts the legal battles behind the decade’s biggest stories, and what it takes to defend press freedom in the age of ‘fake news.’
Essays
By Maeve Higgins | Published By Penguin Books
Wry, warm essays on leaving Ireland for New York – immigration, belonging and the absurdities of starting over, from a comedian with a reporter’s eye.
Fiction
By Lisa Halliday | Published By Simon & Schuster
Two seemingly unrelated stories – a young editor’s affair with a famous novelist, an Iraqi-American detained at Heathrow – fold into one dazzling meditation on power and imagination.
Essays
By Jeremy Clarkson | Published By Michael Joseph
Jeremy Clarkson’s collected columns: cantankerous, funny dispatches on politics, cars and modern life, delivered with his trademark bluster.
History
By Ivo H. Daalder & James M. Lindsay | Published By PublicAffairs
A clear-eyed account of America’s retreat from global leadership – how the postwar order erodes when the country that built it walks away, and why it matters.
Fiction
By Michael Ondaatje | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
In the rubble of postwar London, two siblings are left in the care of mysterious strangers – a haunting novel about memory and the secret lives of parents.
Memoir
By John Major | Published By HarperCollins
The former British Prime Minister tells his improbable story – from leaving school at sixteen to Downing Street – with candor about the turbulent politics of the 1990s.
Essays
By John Updike | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
John Updike’s late essays and criticism – three decades of reflections on books, art and American life from one of its great men of letters.
Journalism
By David D. Kirkpatrick | Published By Viking
A New York Times correspondent’s gripping account of Egypt’s revolution and its unraveling – how a democratic opening ended in coup and repression.
History
By Ben Macintyre | Published By Crown Publishing
The true story of Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB officer who spied for Britain – perhaps the greatest espionage tale of the Cold War, told like a thriller.
Journalism
By Bob Woodward | Published By Simon & Schuster
Bob Woodward takes readers inside the Trump White House – a reported portrait of decision-making, chaos and the aides who tried to contain it.
Journalism
By Rania Abouzeid | Published By W. W. Norton & Company
Four lives inside Syria’s uprising and war – years of fearless on-the-ground reporting distilled into an intimate epic of revolution, loss and survival.
Fiction
By Viet Thanh Nguyen | Published By Grove Press
Stories of lives suspended between Vietnam and America – displacement, memory and family, from the Pulitzer-winning author of The Sympathizer.
Fiction
By Amor Towles | Published By Viking
Sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel, a Russian count builds a rich life within its walls – an elegant, warm-hearted novel spanning decades of Soviet history.
Fiction
By Mohsin Hamid | Published By Riverhead Books
As their city collapses into war, two lovers escape through mysterious doors that open onto other countries – a luminous fable of migration and love.
Thriller
By Leila Slimani | Published By Penguin Books
The nanny seemed perfect – until the unthinkable. A taut, unsettling novel about class, motherhood and dependence, winner of the Prix Goncourt.
Memoir
By Hisham Matar | Published By Random House
A son returns to Libya after decades of exile to search for his disappeared father – a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of grief, courage and homeland.
Thriller
By John le Carre | Published By Viking
George Smiley’s world revisited: an aging spy is called to account for Cold War operations long buried – le Carre closing the circle on his masterpiece.
Fiction
By Ali Smith | Published By Hamish Hamilton
In post-Brexit Britain, an unlikely friendship between a young woman and an old man – a playful, melancholy meditation on time, art and belonging.
Journalism
By Wendy Pearlman | Published By Custom House
Syria’s uprising and war told entirely in the voices of Syrians themselves – intimate testimonies gathered over years of interviews with refugees and exiles.
Fiction
By Alaa Al Aswany | Published By Harper
Egyptian students and expatriates collide in post-9/11 America – a sharp social novel of identity, politics and compromise from the author of The Yacoubian Building.
Memoir
By John le Carre | Published By Viking
Stories from a life in and around espionage – le Carre’s memoir of the encounters, betrayals and characters behind the novels.
Journalism
By Roberto Saviano | Published By Penguin Press
From the author of Gomorrah, a fearless investigation of the global cocaine trade – how narco-money threads through banks, ports and politics worldwide.
Memoir
By Diana Darke | Published By Haus Publishing
A British Arabist restores an old courtyard house in Damascus – an intimate window onto Syria’s history and culture, and the war that followed.
History
By Svetlana Alexievich | Published By Dalkey Archive Press
Survivors, liquidators and widows of the nuclear disaster speak – a devastating oral history from the Nobel Prize-winning master of documentary literature.
Fiction
By Ahmed Saadawi | Published By Penguin Books
In occupied Baghdad, a junk dealer stitches a body from bomb victims’ remains – and it wakes. A darkly comic fable of war’s endless violence.
Journalism
By William Dalrymple | Published By Bloomsbury Publishing
Nine paths of devotion across modern India – monks, dancers and mystics – as ancient spiritual traditions collide with the twenty-first century.
Fiction
By Orhan Pamuk | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
Four decades in the life of an Istanbul street vendor – love, family and a changing city, from Turkey’s Nobel laureate.
Fiction
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
A young Nigerian woman remakes herself in America, then returns home – a sweeping story of race, love and identity across three continents.
Thriller
By David Lagercrantz | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist return – hackers, the NSA and a dangerous secret, continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.
History
By Paul Johnson | Published By Viking
A brisk, admiring portrait of the twentieth century’s greatest statesman – his flaws, his wit and the decisions that saved Britain.
Thriller
By Michele Giuttari | Published By Abacus
A British Arabist restores an old courtyard house in Damascus – an intimate window onto Syria’s history and culture, and the war that followed.
Essays
By Roy Peter Clark | Published By Little, Brown and Company
A master writing coach on the craft of brevity – how to say more with less in the age of tweets, posts and headlines.
History
By Jessica Fellowes | Published By HarperCollins
The official companion to the beloved series – the real Edwardian history behind the house, the family and life below stairs.
Fiction
By Jhumpa Lahiri | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
Eight luminous stories of Bengali-American families – parents and children negotiating love, duty and distance across generations.
Journalism
By Dave Eggers | Published By McSweeney’s
After Hurricane Katrina, a Syrian-American contractor paddles through New Orleans helping neighbors – until his arrest reveals a darker American story.
Memoir
By Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett | Published By Scribner
A young journalist is kidnapped in Somalia and held for 460 days – a harrowing, humane memoir of survival and forgiveness.
Journalism
By Jon Lee Anderson | Published By Penguin Press
A New Yorker correspondent’s eyewitness chronicle of the invasion of Iraq – the city, its people and the war as it actually unfolded.
Fiction
By Fadia Faqir | Published By Heron Books
A Jordanian daughter searches for the father who left for Afghanistan’s jihad – a novel of abandonment, faith and reconciliation.
History
By Kai Bird | Published By Crown Publishing
The life of Robert Ames, the CIA’s key man in the Middle East, killed in the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing – espionage as tragedy.
Fiction
By Elif Shafak | Published By Viking
Two families – one Turkish, one Armenian-American – bound by a buried past; a bold novel about memory, denial and Istanbul itself.
Fiction
By Orhan Pamuk | Published By Alfred A. Knopf
In 1970s Istanbul, a wealthy man’s obsessive love becomes a museum of ordinary objects – Pamuk’s grand novel of desire and memory.
Thriller
By Paula Hawkins | Published By Riverhead Books
A commuter watches the same couple from her train window every day – until the woman vanishes. The blockbuster psychological thriller.
Fiction
By Stephen King | Published By Scribner
A teacher steps through a portal to 1958 with a mission: stop the Kennedy assassination – Stephen King’s epic of time, love and history.
Poetry
By Adonis | Published By Yale University Press
A landmark collection from the great Syrian-born poet – half a century of verse that remade modern Arabic poetry, in Khaled Mattawa’s acclaimed translation.