The 15-Minute Book Club

For many years, Matthew Knott worked as a private tutor for  extremely wealthy and privileged children in the heart of London. In this book, he retells stories from his first three years in this unusual industry.   Instagram: 15minbookclub

Omar El Akkad's book is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar believed his whole life that the West offered freedom and justice for all. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.    Instagram: 15minbookclub   Mohammed El-Kurd Addresses the UN: https:/...

Margaret Atwood's iconic novel is set in a dystopian future where world-wide environmental collapse & disease have caused a widespread infertility crisis. This gives rise to a radical fundamentalist group called The Sons of Jacob who stage a coup against the United States government and replace it with the Republic of Gilead. The new regime forces the few fertile women into reproductive servit...

Alice Walker's classic novel is set in the rural south of America, in the state of Georgia, in the early 20th century. It revolves around two sisters, Celie and Nettie. This is a beautiful epistolary tale of love, forgiveness and the road to strength.    Instagram: 15minbookclub

First published in America in 1937 during The Great Depression, Napoleon Hill's timeless book claims to have uncovered the secret to great wealth. The book outlines a 13-step formula to help the reader identify their goals, master the secret of true lasting success, obtain whatever they want in life and join the ranks of the super-successful.    Instagram: 15minbookclub

Jeanette Winterson's classic coming of age story is a semi-autobiography. She is adopted by strict Pentecostal evangelists in the north of England, and from a young age she’s raised to be a missionary and is immersed in a rigid religious worldview. But as Jeanette gets older, she discovers that she’s a lesbian, which puts her in direct conflict with her church and her adoptive mother.  Instagram:...

Graham Swift's prize winning novel is set in the Fens of eastern England and fluctuates across multiple timelines. The narrator, Tom Crick, is a 52 year old history teacher who recounts stories of his family history and their deeply buried secrets. At its heart, the novel reflects history's purpose, not as simply a record of facts, but a fragile and necessary attempt to give meaning to chaos.  Ins...

Ken Kesey's classic novel is set in a state mental institute in 1950s America. Nurse Ratchet runs the ward like a military operation, weaponising shame, fear, and manipulation to keep the patients compliant. She maintains this façade of politeness and professionalism while emotionally castrating the men in her care, who have internalised the notion that they are deeply broken and can’t survive fre...

Lois Lowry's modern classic in young adult literature is a dystopian novel that takes place in a seemingly utopian society that has eliminated pain, fear, war, and hatred by converting to "Sameness"— which is a plan that erases all emotional depth and memories of the past. It follows the main character, Jonas, he’s a 12-year-old boy who lives in this tightly controlled community. Everyone is assig...

Khaled Hosseini's critically acclaimed novel follows Amir, a young boy from a wealthy family in Kabul, and his close friendship with Hassan, the son of his father’s servant. Despite their bond, class differences and societal pressures strain their relationship, and a pivotal moment of betrayal by Amir changes both of their lives forever.   A Thousand Splendid Suns Review: https://salmaintb.podbean...

Mark Haddon's novel was first published in 2003. It’s a unique story that’s told from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy Christopher Boone, who describes himself as “a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties." The novel begins with Christopher discovering that his neighbour's dog, Wellington, has been mysteriously killed with a garden fork. Christopher sets out to find the person who kil...

First published in German in 1915, it's one of Franz Kafka’s most famous and influential works — a blend of the absurd, existential, and psychological. Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up one day to find that he's turned into a “monstrous vermin”.  University of Oxford, Conversation of Kafka: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/conversations-on-kafka/id1750531209?i=1000657947433   Insta...

Kathryn Stockett's novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, around the time of The Civil Rights Movement in America. It follows three characters, Skeeter Phelan; a young white aspiring writer who comes back home from college and starts to develop an awareness of racial inequality and the unfair treatment of Black domestic workers, specifically black women who work as maids in white...

Michel Faber's iconic novel is a unique blend of science fiction, horror, and social commentary. It follows a woman named Isserley as she drives around the Scottish Highlands picking up male hitchhikers that she then drugs and takes to a secret farm facility. Over time, it becomes clear that she’s not what she seems—she’s actually an alien working for an extraterrestrial corporation that harvests...

Avraham Yehoshua's short story follows an unnamed Israeli scholar who takes a job as a forest ranger. He’s stationed in a remote fire-watch tower, and his job is to guard the forest and immediately sound the alarm if he sees it catch fire. As the story progresses, he gradually starts to realise that the forest is prone to fires because the land was never meant to sustain it in the first place —it...

Antoine De Saint-Exupery's literary classic, published in 1943 and translated into over 500 languages, is about a pilot who crash lands in the Sahara Desert and meets The Little Prince who tells him all about his adventures visiting different planets. Although this is officially classified as a children’s book, it’s widely considered to be a kind of philosophical fable for adult readers as well. ...

Adania Shibli's groundbreaking novel is divided into two parts. The first half is narrated in the third person from the perspective of an Israeli soldier, and is set in the summer of 1949 in the Negev desert. The second half takes place in the present day, and is narrated in the first person from the perspective of a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah. The novel draws a chilling parallel between...

Michael J. Sandel examines our current political polarisation, which in many ways is the result of our general attitude towards success and failure, especially in a time of rising inequality. The book looks at the fallacy of being self-made, he argues that there is no such thing as a self-made individual.    Instagram: 15minbookclub Studio B, Unscripted: With Ken Loach and Edouard Louis: https://w...

Rodman Philbrick's wholesome young adult novel is about two young boys in the seventh grade named Kevin and Max. Max is super tall and strong but can barely read. Kevin on the other hand is extremely intelligent, a kind of child prodigy genius with a physical disability where his organs grow faster than his bones. Both of them are bullied and outcast at school for different reasons. This is a whol...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel is narrated from the perspective of Nick Carraway. Nick looks back at the summer of 1922 when he met Jay Gatsby, a man with an extraordinary gift for hope. Gatsby is in love with Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to the wealthy and arrogant Tom Buchanan. At its heart, this novel is a love story. But one that explores the role that economic and social class div...

Craig Foster's book is a kind of call for us to go back to what he considers to be our true home, the wild. He recounts many remarkable encounters he’s had with animals in the wild. Craig believes that there is a wild creature in all of us, and in the book he looks at practical ways in which we can let that part out to thrive. He examines the way we’ve become domesticated as a species, and how thi...

Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, Samantha Harvey's novel follows six astronauts onboard a spacecraft that's orbiting the Earth. This is a beautifully written book that puts its readers face-to-face with the obscurity of our existence.    Instagram: 15minbookclub

Daphne Du Maurier's classic novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who marries Maxim De Winter and becomes the new mistress of Manderley. We follow her as she tries to navigate living in his first wife, Rebecca’s, shadow, and ultimately uncovering the mystery of her tragic death. Instagram: 15minbookclub  

Emily Bronte's epic novel is set among the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th and early 19th century. Kathy and Heathcliff, two sadistic and unhinged individuals, are madly in love but could never be together in life. "My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE re...

Oscar Wilde's only published novel and one of my favourite books of all time. “"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always you...