Basharat Peer is a Kashmiri journalist and political commentator whose debut book, Curfewed Night, is a frontline account of life and war in his homeland

What are you reading these days?

Deborah Baker’s biography of Maryam Jameelah, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism and Siddhartha Deb’s The Beautiful and the Damned: Life in New India, an extraordinary book of reportage about wealth and poverty in India.

Which books are on your bedside table?

Jamil Ahmed’s The Wandering Falcon.

What is the one book / author you feel everyone must read?

The Red and the Black by Stendhal.

What are you planning to reread?

The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America by Nicholas Lemann and Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by Anthony Lukas.

What is the one book you read because you thought it would make you appear smarter?

I have never read a book to appear smarter, but I do read every book to learn and understand something more about the human condition.

Although, as a young journalist when I was introduced to the idea of the reported essay or New Journalism,I did flaunt my copies of Tom Wolfe’s The New Journalism, The Granta Book of Travel and The Granta Book of Reportage.

What is the one book you started reading but could not finish?

There are many such books.

What is your favourite childhood book or story?

An abridged version of The Merchant of Venice.