Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Professor Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, His books include The Legend of Napoleon (Granta, 2004), In the Shadow of the General (OUP, 2012) and How the French Think (Allen Lane, 2015). He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. In 2020, he became a Grand Commander of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (G.C.S.K.), the highest honour of the Republic of Mauritius.

His biography, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (Allen Lane, 2020) won the 2021 Wolfson History Prize, with the judges describing it as an ‘erudite and elegant biography of a courageous leader which tells a gripping story with a message that resonates strongly in our own time’. His latest book is Daring to Be Free, described in the New Statesman as “An absorbing and revelatory history of black resistance to the transatlantic trade … a marvel of historical analysis and research.” It is available now.

1. The resistance of the enslaved https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2025/10/the-liberating-power-of-vodou
2. The American academic and film-maker Henry Louis Gates jr https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/10/henry-louis-gates-jr-black-box-writing-race-arrested-beers-with-obama
3. The Victor Hugo museum in Paris https://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en
4. Swimming in the river Seine in Paris in August https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk7nk35l2o
5. The Sandhamn Murders https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/02/08/netflixs-best-new-crime-show-is-here-and-no-critics-have-seen-it-the-are-murders/
6. The Mauritian painter Vaco Baissac https://mauritiusarts.com/artist/vaco-baissac/

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Ana Schnabl discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian writer and editor. She writes for several Slovenian media outlets and is a monthly columnist for the Guardian. Her collection of short stories Razvezani (Beletrina, 2017) met with critical acclaim. Three years later Schnabl published her first novel Masterpiece (Mojstrovina, Beletrina, 2020). Her second novel Flood Tide (Plima, Beletrina, 2022) was nominated for the Slovenian Kresnik Award. Her third novel September (Beletrina, 2024) won the Kresnik Award in 2025.

1. Dog Behaviour: I’ve got two dogs, and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what they were actually saying.

2. The Concept of Universal Basic Income: I suspect that for a lot of people, Universal Basic Income sounds like a fantasy dreamt up by the lazy and the work-shy—a clever way to dodge the nine-to-five. In reality, it’s nothing of the sort.

3. Mina Mazzini: Known simply as Mina, she was nothing short of a force of nature—Italy’s greatest voice and legend. Her vocal range was outrageous and her stage presence magnetic.

4. Jellyfish: I grew up spending summers on the Slovene coast, where most beach conversations about jellyfish revolved around how nasty they are. I think it’s time to give them a bit of a rebrand.

5. Lojze Kovačič's The Newcomers: I know I sound like a total boomer saying this, but The Newcomers really is a masterpiece—a towering work of autofiction, written decades before “autofiction” was even a buzzword on Goodreads.

6. Yugoslavia: I’m not yugonostalgic—I was simply born too late to have any real experience of living there. But I am a defender of some of the genuinely progressive ideas and policies that Yugoslavia introduced and managed to sustain.

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Adam Lind discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam Lind has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged like-minded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The New York Post, Business Insider, The Sun, and others. His new book is Floating Home: Lessons from a life less ordinary, which is available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/floating-home-9781526683526/.

1. The importance of human connection
2. The fear mongering and segregation of the news
3. You can have control over your thoughts
4. You don’t need a lot of money to travel
5. Adversity can be a gift
6. Comparison is the thief of joy

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