Q&A with a Hurst author
November 2025
Q&A WITH A HURST AUTHOR - from the November newsletter
Rime Allaf has written and spoken about Syria and the Middle East for over twenty years, including as associate fellow at Chatham House (2004–12). Raised in Europe and America in a diplomatic family, she has contributed to the BBC, Sky News, CNN, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and others. Her book It Started in Damascus is out now.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’ve just finished reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, a great recommendation by my daughter who occasionally pushes books she likes my way. As I often gravitate towards nonfiction, I’m trying to revert to having more literature and imagination in my life, and, importantly, more beautiful writing.
If you could time travel, what period would you visit?
2364, when Star Trek: The Next Generation begins. If I could, I would assign a weekly period at schools around the world so kids could watch an episode, and discuss the idea of a unified planet that tries to discover and respect the cultures it encounters. I do have less lofty desires too: those machines that transport us anywhere, and others that magically produce meals on demand and instantly deliver Captain Picard’s beverage of choice: tea, Earl Grey, hot.
What book have you found either the most overrated or underrated?
Not so much underrated as ‘underknown’: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet which engulfed me when I first read it (in Spanish), a gift from someone who knew my tastes well. Pessoa was a fascinating, multi-faceted and brilliant writer, and this book is full of the mundanities of a serial diarist and the most profound reflections on our existence.
If you could pick three historical figures to come to your dinner party, who would they be?
Simone Veil, whose class and eloquence were legendary, an admirable politician and Auschwitz survivor who pushed ground-breaking women’s rights legislation in France and Europe. Martin Luther King Jr, a magnificent orator, thinker, and principled defender of equality and human rights. And rock legend and Queen guitarist Brian May, because music is art and history and science, and he is all of these too. I think they’d make perfect company.
Your desert island book?
I always dread these questions about books or music; how can people have such certitude about sticking with one piece, or even one style forever? Under duress, I would choose Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, because it was my first big English literature love.
Printed books or ebooks?
Printed, soft and smooth.
TV series or films?
Films.
Trains or planes?
Trains that glide across the lands.
