Places & Travel

Guest host Dave Davies interviews Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland — and a New York native. He moved to Warsaw in 1990 to help rebuild Jewish communities there. It was a homecoming of sorts: Schudrich's grandparents emigrated from Poland before World War II.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf faces protests at home — and given his stance on the Taliban, eroding support in the West as well. Journalist and author Ahmed Rashid parses the challenges and possibilities of contemporary Pakistani politics.

In a single monologue, the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid's sophomore novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, tells his life story to an American stranger over dinner in a Pakistani cafe. Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Retired CIA field officer Larry Devlin was appointed CIA station chief in Zaire in the Congo in 1960, following the Congo's independence from Belgium. It was also a time when the Congo was a significant pawn in the Cold War.

Devlin has written a memoir about his experiences, Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's latest article is about the administration's efforts to undermine Iran. The article appears in The New Yorker magazine's March 5th edition and is titled "The Redirection: Is the Administration's New Policy Benefiting our Enemies in the War on Terror?"

Hisham Nitar's semi-autobiographical debut novel In the Country of Men was short-listed for the 2006 Mann Booker Prize.

Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents and spent his childhood in Tripoli, Libya, and later in Cairo, Egypt. He has lived in Great Britain since 1986.

Matar's father, a critic of the Libyan regime, was arrested in 1990. Matar has been unable to find out what happened to him.

Ishmael Beah has written a memoir about his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Orphaned by the civil war there, he was carrying an AK-47 by the age of 12. Pumped up by drugs, he was forced to kill or be killed.

When he was 15, UNICEF took Beah to a rehabilitation center. He was eventually adopted by an American woman and brought to the United States, where he attended high school and graduated from Oberlin College.

His book is A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Jazz trumpeter and New Orleans native Irvin Mayfield lost his father, Irvin Mayfield Sr., in the floods resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Mayfield talks about his Mardi Gras memories, and the state of his hometown today.

Journalist Matt Beynon Rees is now a crime novelist, too. The Collaborator of Bethlehem follows a Palestinian schoolteacher who turns detective to solve a murder set in the violence-ridden West Bank. Rees was based in Jerusalem as a Middle East reporter for Time magazine for more than a decade, serving as bureau chief from 2000 to 2006.

Writer Nuruddin Farah's new novel, Knots, is about the terrible conditions for women in Somalia. The central character is a Somali-Canadian woman who returns to Mogadiscio, her native city.

When Elif Shafak's novel The Bastard of Istanbul was published in her home country, the best-selling author was was accused of "public denigration of Turkishness." She was eventually acquitted. As many as 60 writers, journalists, publishers, scholars and intellectuals have been prosecuted under the Turkish penal code. One of them was editor Hrant Dink, who was assassinated last month by a Turkish fanatic.

Historian Thant Myint-U is a former U.N. official and a native of Burma. His new book, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma — part memoir, part history — explores the problems plaguing the country.

Journalist Zev Chafets is a former New York Daily News columnist and founding editor of the Jerusalem Report. In his new book, A Match Made in Heaven, Chafets explores American evangelical support for Israel.

The New York Times called Peter Boyle "one of the most successful character actors of his time." He died Tuesday at the age of 71. Boyle had roles in many films, including Young Frankenstein and Monster's Ball, and played the father on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. His breakthrough role was the 1970 film Joe, in which he plays a factory worker on a rampage against hippies and the counterculture. This interview originally aired on May 25, 1995.

Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His new book, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, is about the Arabs who protected or aided Jews in North Africa during World War II.

Brian Whitaker is the Middle East editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, and his new book is Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East. Whitaker also runs the al-Bab Web site, which aims to provide Arab cultural and political information to non-Arabs.

Israeli gay rights activist Noa Sattath is the executive director of Jerusalem Open House, an organization devoted to fostering gay pride. Last month, the city hosted WorldPride 2006: Love Without Borders, an international pride gathering. A gay pride rally was held at a university stadium in Jerusalem under tight security. A march was planned but did not take place.

Since 2004, journalist Huda Ahmed has been covering the war in Iraq for the McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) News Service. This spring, she was awarded the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship by the International Women's Media Foundation. The fellowship is named for Boston Globe reporter Elizabeth Neuffer, who was killed while on assignment in Iraq. Ahmed has written about the issues of women and children in a war zone, human rights abuses and the struggle of women in a Muslim society, and will discuss the particular dangers of covering the war in Iraq.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new animated feature Happy Feet. As the film's domestic earnings approach $100 million, the musical has started to pop up on lists of prospective Best Picture nominees.

Nicholas Blanford is the Beirut correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. His new book, Killing Mr. Lebanon, is about the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.