Zahid Hussain, an award-winning journalist, is a senior editor with Newsline as well as a correspondent for The Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. His latest book, The Scorpion’s Tail, was published in 2010

What are you reading these days? I am reading a fascinating book, Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are Reshaping the World, by Dominique Moïsi, a leading French intellectual.

Which books are on your bedside table? Never Let Me Go, a gripping novel written by Kazuo Ishiguro, a Booker prize winner.

Which titles are on your bucket list of books? Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter Bergen and The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature.

What is the one book/author you feel everyone must read? Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, jointly authored by Daron Acemoglu, a professor at MIT, and James A. Robinson of Harvard. The book examines why some nations have done well and others failed. Highly engaging and extremely well-written, the book answers some of the questions about power, prosperity and poverty. It is all about institutions: the nations which fail to develop strong institutions are bound to fail. Some lessons for us?

What are you planning to reread? The essay, “Why I write”, by George Orwell, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Aag ka Darya by Quratulain Hyder.

What is the one book you read because you thought it would make you appear smarter? Don’t know.

What is the one book you started reading but could not finish? The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

What is your favourite childhood book or story? Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.