Books like Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions — picked by fans

I'm a writer and filmmaker based in Cairo for over a decade. I was inspired to move to Egypt when I visited during the 2011 Revolution and fell in love with the vibrance of the city. Since then Cairo has changed and I have lived through an extraordinary history with some difficult times but always with a sense of curiosity for stories. My book, Cairo’s Ultras, began as a documentary film project in 2012 and I have found many other interesting topics during my time in this enigmatic and fascinating place. I will publish a second book next year, called Decolonising Images, that looks at the photographic heritage and visual culture of Egypt.

I’m a professor and YA author. Books helped me navigate the difficult choices I faced growing up. I gravitated to characters that I could picture myself befriending and looking up to because they had the bravery and strength that I wanted to have. As an author, I believe we need more stories about people who leave a positive mark on the world. I try to write characters that I can both relate to and would want to be friends with: characters who, in facing difficulty, discover the strength of their humanity because they have a light and goodness that shines somewhere deep inside.

I am an emeritus professor of Russian and modern European history with twenty-five years of teaching and research experience, and I’ve been teaching the history of terrorism for almost that long. I am drawn to the field because it gives me a prism through which to explore nearly every topic in modern history that I’m passionate about: violence, extremism, the growth of the state, the proliferation of modern ideologies, and so on. In fact, I could teach most of my courses, including the survey of European history, almost entirely through the lens of terrorism, which is a sobering thought!

My fascination with the relationship between Rome and America grows out of the work I have done on early American culture, contemporary political thought, and ancient Rome. My most recent work, Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging, took shape through a lot of conversations over the years with friends and colleagues about the different tensions I saw in Roman politics and culture around questions of national identity, tensions that I saw being played out in the United States. I don’t like tidy histories. I am drawn to explorations of politics and culture that reveal the anxieties and dissonance that derive from our own attempt to resolve our incompleteness. 

Growing up as a total tomboy in the early 90s, I naturally gravitated toward traditionally male-dominated sports, jobs, and hobbies throughout my life. Despite encountering instances of sexual harassment and sexism along the way, I had strong role models and books with fierce main characters to turn to for support. I have always been passionate about women claiming their power, which is why I love writing about and reading stories that center on this theme.

I have always loved realistic fiction that shows characters navigating tricky real-world situations and reaching inside themselves to be their best – as friends, children, siblings, etc. As a writer of stories for children, I write the kinds of books I love to read, the ones that make readers ask themselves, what would I do if I were in that situation?  I think it’s important to show all our stories, past and present, from different places and viewpoints, so that we can learn from one another and become our best selves.

My name is Thomas Tarasios and I'm a fantasy author. I was a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games growing up, particularly I to IX, and as a voracious fantasy reader I've made it my business to find novels that deliver that 'Final Fantasy feeling' (eccentric ensemble cast, adventure, hard magic system, grim yet fun, etc.), scouring the web, message boards and Reddit for recommendations on this topic and reading the suggested books. When it came time to write my own fantasy series, I set out to write as if it were an original Final Fantasy game—a fan novelization of an awesome new Final Fantasy game that doesn't actually exist as a game!

I am a disabled author and podcaster who loves fantasy, but wanted more out of the genre than the Eurocentric Lord of the Rings model. I grew up watching Aladdin, reading Egyptian mythology, and one of my most prized books is an illustrated Shahnameh. There are brilliant stories set in deserts and rainforests, with intense magic and danger, and I hope you’ll enjoy these as much as I do. 

I became passionate about this subject when I was at university and I realised that so many revolutions that were conducted in the name of high ideals ended up involving considerable suffering and death on the part of the ordinary people. And not just the ordinary people, but the revolutionaries as well. Why, I wondered, was this the case, and did it mean, as many in the 1960s and 1970s argued, that revolution was ultimately self-defeating? The quest to answer these questions remains on-going, but the books I have suggested have helped me to make some headway towards a resolution.

I am a Canadian writer who has, at one time or another, been a magician, an avid Dungeon & Dragons player, and the creator of fictional worlds where magic is both surprisingly fun and yet hidden in the shadows of our own everyday world. I love it when a writer spins original magic into a familiar world, and I am even more impressed when magic and a new world drag my attention and won’t let me go. These five diverse novels touch on everything I love about magic and storytelling without rehashing the old tropes of wizards, dragons, and fair maidens in distress.