成人快手

Arts & Culture

Last updated:聽14 december, 2010 - 10:49 GMT

Read my country

If you had to recommend three books or poems that would deepen a visitor's understanding of your country and culture, what would they be?

We asked this question on The Strand and compiled a list of listeners' responses.

The programme has spoken to some of the world's finest writers to uncover their personal literary guides to the countries they call home.

Elif Shafak: Turkey

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Best-selling novelist Elif Shafak is the author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love.

  • The Clown and His Daughter by Halide Edip Adivar

Halide Edip Adivar was both a novelist and an activist and was especially interested in women's rights. This novel was first published in English in 1935 and is set in the world of the theatre.

  • Subjects of the Sultan by Suraiya Farogh

A look at the daily lives of ordinary people living under Ottoman rule.

  • Fragments of Culture, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti

Focusing on all aspects of modern Turkey, from the lives of trans-sexuals in Istanbul to politcal cartoons and Turkish humour.

Anne Holt: Norway

Anne Holt

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Anne Holt is a Norwegian crime writer and a former lawyer, Minister of Justice, journalist and television news presenter. She currently lives in Oslo.

  • Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen

Ibsen's epic drama about the life of fantasist Peer Gynt which Anne Holt sees as an accurate depiction of the Norwegian character.

  • The Skyscraper Quartet by Tove Nilsen

Norwegian life in the 1960s seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.

  • Verdensmestrene (The World Champions) by Henrik Langeland

The story of four families in Oslo in the 1980s which opens at the 1982 ski-ing world championships when, famously, Norwegian ski-er Oddvar Bra 's pole broke in the closing stages of the relay race - a moment which has become part of Norway's national memory.

For more information, visit Anne Holt's .

Anjali Joseph: India

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Anjali Joseph is an Indian author and journalist. Saraswati Park is her first novel.

Her three choices are:

  • Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay
  • The Bachelor of Arts by R K Narayan
  • English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Thomas Keneally: Australia

thomas keneally

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The Booker prize-winning author of Schindler's Ark, Thomas Keneally, chooses books about the character and culture of Australia.

His three choices are:

  • A History of Australia by Manning Clark
  • Voss by Patrick White
  • Poetry by Kenneth Slessor and Judith Wright

Colm Toibin: Ireland

Colm Toibin

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Colm Toibin is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer and critic. His new collection of short stories, The Empty Family, is published by Penguin.

His three choices are:

  • Making Love outside 脕ras an Uachtar谩in by Paul Durkin
  • Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
  • The Aran Islands by J M Synge

Kei Miller: Jamaica

Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet and novelist and also teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Interview with Kei Miller coming soon.

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'I picked three books about the different worlds in Peru'

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