Author: BBC World Service

In Eat the Rich the inimitable American satirist P.J. O'Rourke tours the world trying to understand why some countries 'have' and some countries 'have not'.

He talks to Harriett Gilbert and answers questions about his book from a live studio audience and listeners around the world.

Harriett Gilbert talks to the acclaimed German writer Bernhard Schlink about his explosively controversial novel, The Reader, at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

Made into an Oscar-winning Hollywood film with Kate Winslet The Reader tells of law student Michael Berg who, nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

Damon Galgut's internationally acclaimed novel is the story of an idealistic medical graduate who arrives at an isolated South African hospital to take up a year's community service.

Damon discusses his novel The Good Doctor, and answers questions from BBC World Service listeners around the world.

Harriett Gilbert and an audience at the Drill Hall Theatre in Central London talk to bestselling Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie about her internationally acclaimed novel Burnt Shadows.

Spanning much of the 20th Century and into the 21st, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties honoured and betrayed, and loves lost and found.

In the devastating aftermath of the second atomic bomb, Hiroko Tanaka leaves Japan in search of new beginnings.

From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the uncertain wake of 9/11, to the novel's nail-biting climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow over the entire world over.

(Photo: Kamila Shamsie. Credit: Reuters)

This month's World Book Club comes from the Jesus Centre in London.

Harriett Gilbert and readers talk to bestselling writer Barbara Kingsolver about her internationally acclaimed novel The Poisonwood Bible.

Having sold four million copies around the world, Kingsolver's most ambitious novel paints an intimate portrait of a crisis-ridden family amid the larger backdrop of an African nation in chaos.

In 1959 an overzealous Baptist minister Nathan Price drags his wife and four daughters deep into the heart of the Congo on a mission to save the unenlightened souls of Africa.

As his plans unravel in tandem with the country's dreams of becoming an independent democracy, the five women narrate the novel, each in their own inimitable voice.

Part stunning literary thriller, part gothic novel, the book The Shadow of the Wind is a page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead.

It is a potent mix of a coming-of-age novel and a tragic love story set in Barcelona's post-war years. Harriet Gilbert puts questions from the audience to the author Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Harriett Gilbert talks to David Mitchell about his novel Cloud Atlas.

Richard Ford discusses his classic novel 'The Sportswriter' with Harriett Gilbert and an invited studio audience.

French Nobel Laureate JMG Le Clezio talks to Harriett Gilbert in front of an invited studio audience about his recently-translated work Desert.

Contrasting the beauty of a lost culture in the North African desert with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants, the novel is a rich, poetic and provocative epic about colonization and its legacy, which is still painfully relevant after 30 years.

John Boyne discusses his acclaimed novel 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' with Harriett Gilbert and an invited studio audience.