For fans of The Kite Runner, Girl at War and The Cellist of Sarajevo, The Longest Winter is Kevin Sullivan’s inspiring and authentic debut novel about life in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

The Longest Winter is a portrait of a city and its people in a moment of enormous suffering and remarkable grace. In the aftermath of the assassination of a government minister, three life stories are intertwined in a dramatic quest for redemption.

Kevin Sullivan covered the siege of Dubrovnik as a journalist in 1991 and the war in Bosnia from 1992. The descriptions of fighting around Sarajevo and conditions inside the city are taken from his own first-hand reporting. Kevin was seriously wounded in a land-mine explosion in early 1993. While recovering, he wrote an early draft of The Longest Winter. He now lives in Sarajevo and manages communications at ICMP, the international organization established in 1996 to account for the missing from the conflict in former Yugoslavia.

The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM.

Three course menu costs £25 per person – drinks not included.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Aurélie Bourguet – aurelie.bourguet@www.beta.frontlineclub.com

1 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko is brazenly poisoned in central London. His crime? He had made some powerful enemies in Russia.

Based on the best part of a decade’s reporting, as well as extensive interviews with those closest to the events, Luke Harding‘s A Very Expensive Poison is the definitive inside story of the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM.
Three course menu costs £25 per person – drinks not included.

Along with Luke Harding, we are delighted to welcome Marina Litvinenko at the BookNight dinner.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Aurélie Bourguet.

The book grew out of a series of articles Nordland wrote for the NYT in which he described the star crosses lovers as a modern day Romeo and Juliet. Zakia is a Sunni, her lover Mohammad Ali a Shia, and although as children they would play together in their village, as they grew older contact was strictly forbidden.

This is a riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner and an astonishingly powerful and moving portrayal that puts a human face to the ongoing debate about women’s rights in the Muslim world.

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.

For more information about membership and other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

British illustrator and writer Chris Riddell is the current Children’s Laureate, and a passionate holder of that title in defence and advocacy of children’s literature and literacy. He is also a great children’s author, known for his Goth Girl character and others. But perhaps of foremost interest to us at the club, Riddell – with Steve Bell – is Britain’s leading practitioner of that great tradition: the political satirical cartoon.

The timing of this BookNight for January was planned before the recent events in Paris, and puts those of a year ago into sharp focus. Riddell will talk about the cartoonist’s craft and tradition – that of the mockery of power. Members who subscribed to the Frontline broadsheet will recall his fine work for us, and readers of the Observer newspaper know his hollow humour well.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both merrier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

We are delighted to welcome Anglo-Italian author and reporter Michela Wrong to present her debut novel, Borderlines. Wrong has been writing non-fiction about African politics for two decades. As a Reuters correspondent first based in the Cote d’Ivoire and former Zaire, she covered the turbulent events of the mid 1990s, including the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko and Rwanda’s post-genocide period. Wrong then moved to Kenya, where she became Africa correspondent for the Financial Times.

In her debut novel, she probes the motives underlying Western engagement with the continent, questioning the value of universal justice and exploring how history itself is forged.

“Borderlines is a novel about relationships, the mysteries they contain, and the ways in which – when they go wrong and leave scars borne across generations – it is often for the most prosaic, petty reasons. This is as true of the relationships between people in the novel as it is for those between governments and their citizens, between nations.” – FT Kola for the Guardian

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu is £25 per person excluding drinks.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

For our first BookNight of the year, we are delighted to welcome American non-fiction writer and policy analyst David Rieff to present his new book The Reproach of Hunger over an evening with Frontline Club members.

Rieff, who has been studying and reporting on humanitarian aid and development for thirty years, investigates the causes of the ongoing food security crisis caused by the widening poverty gap and political unrest from the Middle East to Latin America.

“Rejecting equally utopian humanitarianism and neoconservative ideology, Rieff’s collection of essays provides a compelling analysis of when military intervention is necessary and when it is doomed to fail.” – George Soros

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.

For more information about membership and other benefits on offer, please contact our membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

Addicted to the adrenaline of armed combat, he returned home to wage a longstanding personal battle against substance abuse. Shocking, violent, yet lyrical and ultimately redemptive, this book is a breathtaking feat of reportage and an uncompromising look at the terrifyingly seductive power of war.

“An extraordinary memoir of the Bosnian War… savage and mercilessly readable… deserves a place alongside George Orwell, James Cameron and Nicholas Tomalin. It is as good as war reporting gets. I have nowhere read a more vivid account of frontline fear and survival. Forget the strategic overview. All war is local. It is about the ditch in which the soldier crouches and the ground on which he fights and maybe dies. The same applies to the war reporter. Anthony Loyd has been there and knows it” – Martin Bell, The Times

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. Previous experience has shown that members often gain insight and inspiration from discussions with the author, which enable them to continue reading the book in a new light.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both merrier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

In this extraordinary debut, longlisted for the Guardian first book award, Max Porter‘s compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

“I’m not sure I’ve read anything like Max Porter‘s book before. It stunned me, full of beauty, hilarity, and thick black darkness. It will stay with me for a very long time.” Evie Wyld, Author

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. Previous experience has shown that members often gain insight and inspiration from discussions with the author, which enable them to continue reading the book in a new light.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both happier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

Based on new archive research and original interviews with leading correspondents and diplomats, the book explores why this fiercely contested region exerts such a pull over reporters: those who bring the story to the world. Despite decades of diplomacy, a just and lasting end to the conflict remains as difficult as ever to achieve.

Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent at BBC News, said: “At a time when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is under unprecedented scrutiny, James Rodgers provides an essential and insightful historical perspective on the long “war of words” behind a major conflict of our time. Rodgers’ book is essential reading for those seeking a greater understanding of the difficult dynamics behind reporting – and resolving conflicts.”

James Rodgers is an author and journalist. His previous books are Reporting Conflict (2012) and No Road Home: Fighting for Land and Faith in Gaza (2013). A former BBC correspondent in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza, James lectures in Journalism at City University.

Guests are encouraged to read the book before the event, although you are also welcome to join if you’ve just started your exploration. Previous experience has shown that members often gain insight and inspiration from discussions with the author, which enable them to continue reading the book in a new light.

This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR THE FRONTLINE CLUB: Save 30% when ordering on palgrave.com. Please e-mail Sophie Kayes for the code. Valid until 31 October 2015. Terms and conditions apply.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks. 

The idea behind members’ BookNights is to have a thoroughly good time, encourage reading and discussion, and to end the night both happier and wiser than when it began. For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Sophie Kayes.

For July’s BookNights we are delighted to welcome the distinguished former foreign correspondent for the BBC, Martin Bell OBE, who will present his book The End of Empire over an intimate dinner with Frontline Club members.

Before his career as a BBC correspondent and independent MP, Martin Bell also served as a soldier in Cyprus between 1957 and 1959. In a chocolate box in his attic many years later he found more than 100 letters that he had sent home to his family. He was not a journalist then, but the letters are war reports of a sort, impressions of what it was like to be a conscript on active service during the EOKA rebellion against British rule.

These letters describe road blocks and cordons and searches, murders and explosions and riots – and a strategy of armed repression that ultimately failed. The reality of the failure dawned on the young soldier only at the end, as he burned his intelligence files in perforated oil drums while the EOKA fighters were being feted as heroes in the streets of Nicosia. ‘It seemed,’ he wrote, ‘like a bonfire of the policies.’

Guests will be expected to have read the book, and to be ready and willing to contribute to the conversation. This will be an in-depth discussion rather than a standard format Q&A. The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, following by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM. We will get to know one another over starters before the introduction of the evening’s guest author.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at The Guardian and The Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

Menu £25 per person excluding drinks.