About The Author
Maya Jasanoff is Professor of British and Imperial History at Harvard University. She has recently been a fellow of the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress and the American Council of Learned Societies and has contributed essays to the London Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine and the New York Review of Books.
Her first book, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East 1750-1850, was an alternative history of the British Empire that explored the cross-cultural exchangesof those who lived on its remotest outskirts. It was the winner of the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize, which rewards non-fiction writing.
In 2011, she published Liberty's Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire, in which she examined the realities of the aftermath of the American Revolution of the Revolution through the lives of Loyalist refugees. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
In 2012, she is one of the guest authors at A Room for London, the one-room installation on the Southbank Centre, which is open to rent by the public, as well as hosting a series of writers, musicians and artists, who will spend their in this ship-shaped place of refuge and reflection to create new works or performances. A reading of what she creates will be recorded in the Room's octagonal library and, on 1st June, will be broadcast as one of twelve installments of A London Address.
Here she picks her Top Ten books, ranging from classic writers like Joseph Conrad and Anthony Trollope to contemporary commentators such as Michela Wrong and Geoff Dyer.