The Book Café - 13/09/2010

On discovering his novelist uncle's past as a fugitive - writer, campaigning Palestinian lawyer and peace activist, Raja Shehadeh, was motivated to write his unique family memoir, "A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle". One hundred year's after fleeing a death sentence for voicing his opposition to Ottoman participation in the First World War, Raja tells Clare English about retracing his uncle's escape route through the Rift Valley. When did philosophical books make the shift from academia to the shelves of mainstream bookshops? We consider the current trend for pop philosophy books and ask if it's really possible to package them into easily digestible chunks? When it comes to rating restaurant nothing beats word of mouth recommendations. So, on the 60th anniversary of eating-out "bible", The Good Food Guide, we ask what place does the printed food guide have in the internet age? Money laundering, mobster money and the collapse of the banking system... How well does John le Carré dissect this complex backdrop in his latest spy thriller "Our Kind of Traitor"? And from this week's BBC Radio Scotland Conversation Zone the late Mo Mowlam shares some personal revelations from the publication of her autobiography.