Five Books

1 week ago | fivebooks.com | Sophie Roell |Roderick Beaton |Greek Revolution |Nikos Kazantzakis |Petros Markaris

We’re talking about books about modern Greek history, which, according to you, started with this very violent period in the early 19th century. For people who don’t know much about Greece’s past, can you give an outline of both the traditional view and what you’re arguing in your book? It’s about the Greek Revolution and the formation of the Greek nation. It’s about how we think of nations, how they come into being and how we belong to them. It happens everywhere and it begins around this time.

3 weeks ago | fivebooks.com | Howard Amos |Lucy Ash |Benjamin Nathans |Alexei Navalny

Russia is a lot in the news at the moment, but the Pushkin House Book Prize has been around for a while. For those who don’t know it, could you say a bit about the prize and what kind of books you, as judges, were looking for? The Pushkin House Book Prize has been awarded annually since 2013 to celebrate the best nonfiction book written in relation to Russia. Indeed, the judges’ attention extends beyond Russia. Russia’s imperial legacies, for example, are very much on the agenda now.

3 weeks ago | fivebooks.com | Frantz Fanon |Adam Shatz

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) was a French psychiatrist and political philosopher, born on the island of Martinique. For a biography of Fanon, there’s The Rebel’s Clinic by Adam Shatz, shortlisted for the 2025 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. Books by Frantz Fanon recommended on Five Books are listed below.

3 weeks ago | fivebooks.com | Stephen Alford |Tim Blanning |Dan Jones |Adam Shatz

Perhaps you could begin by telling our readers about the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and what the judges are looking for. The prize is now in its 22nd year. It was founded over two decades ago by Flora Fraser, the granddaughter of Elizabeth Longford, and by Flora’s then-husband Peter Soros. The idea was to celebrate and encourage the kind of historical biography that Elizabeth Longford wrote.

1 month ago | fivebooks.com | Edward Wong |Anne Applebaum |Mishal Husain |Victoria Amelina

At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China Growing up, Edward Wong didn’t hear his father talk much about the older man’s life in China. Perhaps that’s why Wong found himself retracing the elder Wong’s footsteps through the borderlands of the Chinese empire, in his work as the New York Times’s Beijing correspondent.