Culture Street

Vaseem Khan first saw an elephant lumbering down the middle of the road in 1997 when he arrived in India to work as a management consultant. It was the most unusual thing he had ever encountered and served as the inspiration behind his series of crime novels.

He returned to the UK in 2006 and now works at University College London for the Department of Security and Crime Science where he is astonished on a daily basis by the way modern science is being employed to tackle crime. Elephants are third on his list of passions, first and second being great literature and cricket, not always in that order.

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra is a Mumbai-set mystery. Inspector Chopra inherits an elephant and an unsolved murder on his last day at work. You can buy the book here.

Vaseem Khan joins us today to share his five most influential books.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

A children’s classic. Who would have thought a novel about rabbits could be full of adventure, intrigue and excitement? I read this book as a kid and was hooked on the story of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the other rabbits, displaced from their warren, moving across the English countryside to find a new home. On their epic journey they encounter every conceivable danger, and then meet the ultimate rabbit foe: General Woundwort, surely one of the most villainous villains in children’s fiction. The novel also starts with one of the most poignant opening sentences I’ve read: “The primroses were over.” Buy the book here.

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

I still remember the first time I read this, the overwhelming feeling of discovering something magical. It showed me that through words you could make readers nostalgic for a time and place they had never seen. This book was voted the best Booker prize winner in 40 years. It tells the story of modern India, using magical realism, through the eyes of Saleem Sinai who was born “at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence.” People may know Rushdie because of the controversy around The Satanic Verses, but this is the book that proves he is a literary genius. Buy the book here.

The Fault in our Stars by John Green

How can a book about cancer be romantic and laugh out loud funny on every page? That’s exactly what John Green achieved. For me this book was a revelation. It showed that any topic, in the hands of a good author, can be imbued with humour without losing its essential humanity. My mother passed from this terrible affliction so the story of two teenagers suffering from cancer and their tragic yet delightfully uplifting romance is very personal to me. Be prepared to laugh and cry. Buy the book here.

The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

Sci-fi classic and the best novel of the very far future I have read. A billion years from now humanity is reduced to one fabulous city – Diaspar. The rest of the Earth is a barren wasteland. In Diaspar, Utopia exists – humans live forever, and are reborn many times. But Alvin is a Unique – the first ‘new’ human to be born in millennia. And he is troubled by existence in Diaspar. This novel gave me the impetus to write SF, my earliest efforts at ‘writing seriously’. Truly mind-expanding. Buy the book here.

The Firm by John Grisham

This global bestseller is still the best thriller I have read. Mitch McDeere, a young law graduate, is recruited by a Memphis-based law firm offering an incredible pay package. It’s too good to be true - he soon discovers that the firm is a front for the mafia. This book – which made Grisham a star – moves at a breakneck pace but is written with care, unlike many thrillers. It showed me that thrillers don’t have to be comprised of bad prose and cheesy dialogue, and that you don’t have to feel guilty for calling a good thriller a genuine classic! Buy the book here.