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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 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 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

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 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 Áras an UachtarĂĄin by Paul Durkin
• Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
• The Aran Islands by J M Synge

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.