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Eleanor Wachtel interviews Indian novelist and social anthropologist Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh reads from The Shadow Lines and In an Antique Land.

For once, a dust jacket didn't lie: ʻAlāʼ Al-Aswānī's novel The Yacoubian Building is indeed a best-seller in the Arab world and certainly has stirred up plenty of controversy. Probably the most popular novelist in the Arab world, Al-Aswany joins Eleanor Wachtel this week on Writers & Company to talk about his novel, which "reveals the political corruption, sexual repression, religious extremism, and modern hopes of Egypt today."

Cleopatra is one of the most famous women in history. As a wily seductress who charmed both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she's been the subject of numerous stage and screen portrayals. Francine Prose says she's also greatly misunderstood. The award-winning novelist, essayist and critic has written about real-life figures, from Anne Frank and Ethel Rosenberg, to former president Donald Trump. In her latest book, Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth, Prose challenges common misperceptions about…

From Egypt, Alaa Al Aswany. The most popular novelist in the Arab world talks about revolution and Egypt's pro-democracy movement. Eleanor Wachtel spoke to him onstage, last month, at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montréal, where he won this year's Blue Met Arab Literature Prize.

Interview with Egypt's most celebrated woman author, Nawāl Saʻdāwī (Nawal El Saadawi). A psychiatrist, feminist, novelist, iconoclast, she's been described as the Simore de Beauvoir of the Arab world. This episode recorded live on stage at the Festival of Authors.

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