read books by authors of 43 different nationalities

‘Glenkill’ by Leonie Swann
http://www.amazon.com/Glennkill-German-Leonie-Swann/dp/3442464153

‘The Gospel According to Pilate’ (2000) by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
http://www.amazon.com/LEvangile-selon-Pilate-Eric-Emmanuel-Schmitt/dp/2253152730

‘The Athenian Murders’ by Jose Carlos Somoza

‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini

1) HG Wells: The World Set Free (1914)

Any number of inventions could have put Wells on the list, but for sheer prophetic brilliance it has to be his prediction of a world powered by nuclear energy. Physicist Leo Szilard read the novel in 1932 and it inspired him to mastermind the atom bomb.

Real-life re-animation experiments were all the rage and gave Shelley the idea for her novel, but as creator of the original “Frankenstein science” she became unwitting godmother of everything from heart transplants to GM foods.

3) Jules Verne: From The Earth To The Moon (1865)

Verne predicted submarines and airships, right? Well, not really: the technology was around already. And even his Moon-shot scheme used a cannon instead of a rocket. But he did make Florida the launch site, just like the real-life Apollo missions.

4) Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg: The Achievements of Luther Trant (1910)

Balmer and his brother-in-law co-wrote a series of stories about psychologist-turned-detective Trant. Apart from applying “the method of Freud and Jung”, Trant also employed a lie detector, 14 years before the first polygraph was used by police interrogators.

In Lagado, Gulliver sees a machine that can write books, while on the flying island of Laputa – held aloft by magnetic levitation – astronomers have discovered two tiny moons orbiting the planet Mars. Real astronomers weren’t able to see them until more than a century later.

6) Rudyard Kipling: With The Night Mail (1905)

Kipling’s story is set in 2000 and imagines a sky full of airships, used to send letters and parcels round the world. Not so prophetic? Well, he may have got the time-scale wrong, but Kipling beat the invention of real airmail services by nearly 20 years.

7) Edward Everett Hale: The Brick Moon (1869)

Arthur C Clarke may have invented the geostationary satellite but it was clergyman Hale who gave us the first description of an orbiting space station – a 200-foot sphere made of bricks. Why ever didn’t it catch on?

8) Robert Burton: The Anatomy Of Melancholy (1621)

A perennial must-read for bookish depressives, Burton’s rambling discourse contains the first-ever mention of little green people from space. Was that an invention or a discovery?

Today’s Big Brother isn’t quite what Orwell envisaged, but just as depressing. Surveillance cameras, police helicopters, newspeak, lotteries to numb the masses – Orwell saw them all coming.

That’s right, cyberspace. The year that saw the first Apple Mac go on sale was also when Gibson unleashed the idea of people plugging themselves into a virtual-reality matrix.

• Silver Stallion /by Junghyo Ahn
• Death of a Hero /by Richard Aldington
• Master Georgie /by Beryl Bainbridge
• Darkness Falls from the Air /by Nigel Balchin
• Empire of the Sun /by JG Ballard
• Regeneration /by Pat Barker
• A Long Long Way /by Sebastian Barry
• Fair Stood the Wind for France /by H E Bates
• Carrie’s War /by Nina Bawden
• The Savage Detectives /by Roberto Bolano
• The Sheltering Sky /by Paul Bowles
• An Ice-Cream War /by William Boyd
• When the Wind Blows /by Raymond Briggs
• Invisible Cities /by Italo Calvino
• Auto-da-Fe /by Elias Canetti
• One of Ours /by Willa Cather
• Journey to the End of the Night /by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
• Monkey /by Wu Ch’eng-en
• Heart of Darkness /by Joseph Conrad
• Lord Jim /by Joseph Conrad
• Nostromo /by Joseph Conrad
• Sharpe’s Eagle /by Bernard Cornwell
• The History of Pompey the Little /by Francis Coventry
• The Red Badge of Courage /by Stephen Crane
• Robinson Crusoe /by Daniel Defoe
• Bomber /by Len Deighton
• Deliverance /by James Dickey
• Three Soldiers /by John Dos Passos
• South Wind /by Norman Douglas
• The Three Musketeers /by Alexandre Dumas
• Justine /by Lawrence Durrell
• The Bamboo Bed /by William Eastlake
• The Siege of Krishnapur /by JG Farrell
• Birdsong /by Sebastian Faulks
• Parade’s End /by Ford Madox Ford
• The African Queen /by CS Forester
• The Ship /by CS Forester
• Flashman /by George MacDonald Fraser
• Cold Mountain /by Charles Frazier
• The Beach /by Alex Garland
• To The Ends of the Earth /trilogy by William Golding
• Asterix the Gaul /by Rene Goscinny
• The Tin Drum /by Gunter Grass
• Count Belisarius /by Robert Graves
• Life and Fate /by Vassily Grossman
• De Niro’s Game /by Rawi Hage
• King Solomon’s Mines /by H Rider Haggard
• She: A History of Adventure /by H Rider Haggard
• The Slaves of Solitude /by Patrick Hamilton
• Covenant with Death /by John Harris
• Enigma /by Robert Harris
• The Good Soldier Svejk /by Jaroslav Hasek
• For Whom the Bell Tolls /by Ernest Hemingway
• The Prisoner of Zenda /by Anthony Hope
• The Kite Runner /by Khaled Hosseini
• A High Wind in Jamaica /by Richard Hughes
• Rasselas /by Samuel Johnson
• From Here to Eternity /by James Jones
• Andersonville /by MacKinlay Kantor
• Confederates /by Thomas Keneally
• Schindler’s Ark /by Thomas Keneally
• Day /by A. L. Kennedy
• On the Road /by Jack Kerouac
• Darkness at Noon /by Arthur Koestler
• The Painted Bird /by Jerzy Kosinski
• If Not Now, When? /by Primo Levi
• The Call of the Wild /by Jack London
• The Guns of Navarone /by Alistair MacLean
• All the Pretty Horses /by Cormac McCarthy
• Blood Meridian /by Cormac McCarthy
• The Mark of Zorro /by Johnston McCulley
• Lonesome Dove /by Larry McMurty
• The Naked and the Dead /by Norman Mailer
• La Condition Humaine /by Andre Malraux
• Fortunes of War /by Olivia Manning
• One Hundred Years of Solitude /by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Children of the New Forest /by Frederick Marryat
• Moby-Dick or The Whale /by Herman Melville
• Tales of the South Pacific /by James Michener
• The Cruel Sea /by Nicholas Monsarrat
• History /by Elsa Morante
• Suite Francaise /by Irene Nemirovsky
• The Sorrow of War /by Bao Ninh
• Master and Commander /by Patrick O’Brian
• The Things They Carried /by Tim O’Brien
• The Scarlet Pimpernel /by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
• Burmese Days /by George Orwell
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance /by Robert Pirsig
• The Valley of Bones /by Anthony Powell
• The Soldier’s Art /by Anthony Powell
• The Military Philosophers /by Anthony Powell
• Gravity’s Rainbow /by Thomas Pynchon
• The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen /by Rudolp Erich Raspe
• All Quiet on the Western Front /by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Crab with the Golden Claws /by Georges Remi Herge
• Tintin in Tibet /by Georges Remi Herge
• The Castafiore Emerald /by Georges Remi Herge
• The Devil to Pay in the Backlands /by Joao Guimaraes Rosa
• Sacaramouche /by Rafael Sabatini
• Captain Blood /by Rafael Sabatini
• Everything is Illuminated /by Jonathon Safran Foer
• The Hunters /by James Salter
• Ivanhoe /by Sir Walter Scott
• The Rings of Saturn /by WG Sebald
• Austerlitz /by WG Sebald
• Black Beauty /by Anna Sewell
• The Young Lions /by Irwin Shaw
• A Town Like Alice /by Nevil Shute
• Maus /by Art Spiegelman
• The Charterhouse of Parma /by Stendhal
• Cryptonomicon /by Neil Stephenson
• A Sentimental Journey /by Lawrence Sterne
• Kidnapped /by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island /by Robert Louis Stevenson
• A Flag for Sunrise /by Robert Stone
• Sophie’s Choice /by William Styron
• Gulliver’s Travels /by Jonathan Swift
• War and Peace /by Leo Tolstoy
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn /by Mark Twain
• Around the World in Eighty Days /by Jules Verne
• A Journey to the Centre of the Earth /by Jules Verne
• Williwaw /by Gore Vidal
• Candide /by Voltaire
• Slaughter-House Five /by Kurt Vonnegut
• Put Out More Flags /by Evelyn Waugh
• Men at Arms /by Evelyn Waugh
• The Island of Dr Moreau /by HG Wells
• The Machine-Gunners /by Robert Westall
• Voss /by Patrick White
• The Virginian /by Owen Wister
• The Caine Mutiny /by Herman Wouk
• The Debacle /by Emile Zola

‘Burned Alive: a Victim of the Law of Men’ by Souad
http://www.amazon.com/Burned-Alive-Victim-Law-Men/dp/0446533467

‘Mnaret’ by Leila Aboulela
http://www.amazon.com/Minaret-Novel-Leila-Aboulela/dp/0802170145

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“The Crescent” by Diana Abu-Jaber
http://www.amazon.com/Crescent-Novel-Diana-Abu-Jaber/dp/0393325547

You’re not so into female writing? And not at all into romantic stories? Well, you should grab this book anyway!
First of all, the main female character is much more like men: in her way of expressing, in her life-style, in her loving style. Not because of choice, but because of life.
Secondly, the author has this amazing talent which allows her to write in a very interesting style: not like many female authors of love stories. Abu-Jaber writes clearly, without too much words, logically, and even when working on a trully arabic story – the style known from Sheherezada – she makes it in a very pure way.
As a third argument I’d like to say: this is not the love story known from romantic comedies – not at all. Here, you’ll find drama, drama, drama, and love. It’s really valuable to experience it!

This is a story of a cook Shirine, who is in her late 30s. This is also the story of an university teacher Hanif, who is in his early 40s. These two meet in Iran-geles, part of L.A. occupied by imigrants from Iran, and Middle East in general. These two meet in Lebanese restaurant – space where tastes and flavours of ME mix, where good food meets good stories. A small area of Arabia inside America is the platform where love, passion for food, politics, and life of imigrants need to blossom, in peace.