Discover journalist Nicolas Niarchos’ top literary picks from his library, in our latest instalment of Writer’s Reads…
Nicolas Niarchos, a journalist who focuses on war, energy and migration, is the author of The Elements of Power. He edits New Voyages, a bimonthly magazine of longform reportage and culture. Read on to find out his favourite reads – from novels by Joan Didion to books detailing Congo’s complex wars…
Say Nothing (2018) by Patrick Radden Keefe
This is Keefe at his best. An epic work of storytelling that follows the development of the IRA and looks into the forced disappearance of Jean McConville in Belfast in 1972.
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A Book of Common Prayer (1977) by Joan Didion
Didion is such a good essayist that her fiction is too often overlooked, but this novel, with its Central American intrigue and beautifully developed central character, was a companion on a rough reporting trip and transported me to another world.
Congo: The Epic History of a People (2010) by David van Reybrouck
This book is a wide window into a country that is dear to my heart and central to my reporting. The sweep of this work is just astounding.
The Game of the World (2023) by Kostas Axelos
A work of philosophy for our times: Axelos talks about how reality unfolds through play in a ‘system of systems’ that no one can really control.\
The Good Spy (2014) by Kai Bird
Bird uses the story of Robert Ames, a CIA officer, to tell a granular history of the Middle East that will change the way you look at the region.
Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2011) by Jason Stearns
This book is the most clear-eyed appraisal of Congo’s complex wars out there, built out of years of detailed research and bouncing around on the country’s backroads.
Do Not Disturb (2021) by Michela Wrong
The murder of Patrick Karegeya forms the spine of Wrong’s investigation into the Rwandan government’s targeted assassination programme, and challenges popularly held assumptions about that country’s commitment to peace.
The Twilight Zone (2021) by Nona Fernandez
No novel deals with forced disappearance quite like this meditation on the Pinochet dictatorship’s campaign of terror against its own citizens.
