Author: BBC World Service

This month World Book Club talks to Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela about her award-winning novel Minaret.

This poignant and lyrical tale traces the journey of a young woman, Najwa, who is forced to flee her native Khartoum in Sudan, amidst conflict and political turmoil and exchange it for the anonymity of London.

Drawing on her own experience, Leila Aboulela creates a rich and moving narrative, exploring the fault lines between traditional Islamic culture and the modern, cosmopolitan life of Western Europe.

This beautiful, challenging novel traces Najwa’s struggle with bigotry and faith; isolation and love as she attempts to make sense of her new life and surroundings whilst not losing sight of her roots and heritage.

US literary superstar Jonathan Franzen talks about his hugely acclaimed novel Freedom. An epic of contemporary love and marriage, Freedom charts the exploits of the Berglund family, capturing the temptations and burdens of liberty, the thrills of teenage lust, the frustrations of trying to change the world, and the sobering compromises of middle age.

In fixing his unflinching gaze on the memorable trio of characters, Patty, Walter, and reprobate rockstar Richard Katz and on how they struggle to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of 21st Century America.

(Photo: Jonathan Franzen. Credit: Getty Images)

This month World Book Club talks about the acclaimed international bestseller Tulip Fever with its British author Deborah Moggach. It's 1630s Amsterdam, and tulip fever has seized its inhabitants. Everywhere men are seduced by the exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort it is his young and beautiful wife Sophie that he desires above all, hoping that she will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy. An heir.

He commissions a talented and dashing young portraitist to immortalise them on canvas, but as the portrait unfolds, so does a passion that breeds a grand deception – and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.

(Photo: Deborah Moggach) (Credit: BBC)

Andrey Kurkov discusses his darkly comic novel Death and the Penguin with Harriett Gilbert, and responds to listeners' questions from around the world. The book is set in the grey and deeply surreal world of the former Soviet republic, in which aspiring writer Viktor, who lives with his pet penguin Misha, is asked to write obituaries for Ukrainian VIPs. But the VIPs are still alive - for now. His pride turns to terror as he realises that both he and Misha have been drawn into a trap, from which there seems to be no escape.

The programme is recorded live in his native Ukraine, at the historic Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kiev.*

*(Bulgagov was a Kiev-born Russian writer and playwright from the first half of the 20th Century)

(Photo: Andrey Kurkov sitting next to his literary hero, Mikhail Bulgakov, in Kiev. Credit: Daniel Simons)

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is Jeanette Winterson's searing yet ultimately uplifting coming-out, coming-of-age tale, in which a young girl learns to rebel against her fanatical, cult-like upbringing, and set out on her own path in life. To mark thirty years since its publication, here's another chance to hear the memorable World Book Club in which Jeanette Winterson discusses where fact meets fiction - there are distinct parallels to her own life.

Hear how important this ground-breaking novel has been for readers around the globe. British writer Jeanette Winterson is in conversation with Harriett Gilbert. (First broadcast in 2012.)

(Picture: Jeanette Winterson. Photo: Sam Churchill)

British author Mark Haddon discusses his astonishingly successful novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

Published in 45 languages around the world, it is a murder mystery like no other. Fifteen-year old Christopher knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings, and when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered with a garden fork, he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

Mark Haddon answers readers’ questions from places as diverse as Iceland, Egypt and the Philippines, as well as in the studio in London.

(Photo: Mark Haddon. Credit: Nicky Barranger)

The Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra discusses his novel, The Swallows of Kabul - a portrait of life under a tyrannical theocracy. Khadra is actually a man, and took a pseudonym (his wife's!) during his career in the Algerian Army during the civil war. His book follows a group of people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a world where pleasure is a sin and death awaits anyone who breaks the rules. Khadra answers questions from BBC listeners worldwide, in discussion with Harriett Gilbert.

(Photo: Yasmina Khadra. Credit: E.Robert-Espalieu)

World Book Club talks life, sex, drugs, if not rock ‘n’ roll to chart-topping Irish writer Marian Keyes about her best-selling novel Rachel’s Holiday. She answers BBC listeners' questions from around the world, and also reads several passages from her novel, about feisty 27-year-old Rachel, who is sent to a rehab clinic because of her addiction to drugs. Both funny and moving, Rachel’s Holiday examines the pain of addiction and depression, revealing a darker than usual side to Marian’s writing. The programme is presented by Harriett Gilbert.

(Photo: Marian Keyes. Credit: Barry McCall)

On Monday, Guenter Grass, German Nobel literature prize-winner and author of The Tin Drum, died aged 87. Before his death he had been described as "the world’s most important living writer".

We look back to 2009 when Guenter invited World Book Club into his home in Germany to put listeners' questions to him about his internationally-celebrated novel The Tin Drum.

Bitter and impassioned, the book charts the rise and fall of Nazism through the mischievous eyes of Oskar Matzerath, a dwarf who decided to stop growing at the age of three. First published half a century ago, The Tin Drum was re-published in new translations all over the world to mark its 50th birthday in 2009.

Image: Guenter Grass. Credit: Reuters

Harriet Gilbert discusses JD Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye with a studio audience, including questions from BBC World Service listeners as far afield as Nepal and the Czech Republic. She's in New York's Algonquin Hotel, long-time hangout of our reclusive writer, and answers your questions with the help of authors David Gilbert and Joanna Rakoff. JD Salinger wrote the book in 1951, and died in 2010.

(Photo: JD Salinger) (Credit: AP)