Free Thinking - Syrian buildings. Judging Book Prizes. Georgian Literature

Anne McElvoy talks to Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni about her country's built environment its impact on the behaviour of the people who live there. Also the politics of judging book prizes is debated by Professor Geoffrey Hosking, emeritus professor of Russian history, School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London and Fleur Montanaro, Administrator of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Writers Lasha Bugadze and Aka Morchiladze discuss Georgian literature past and present.

The Battle for Home: The Memoir of a Syrian Architect by Marwa Al-Sabouni is out now.

The winner of the 2016 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize is announced on April 25th. These are the shortlisted books

Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James's 1932-43. Gabriel Gorodetsky, editor (Yale University Press) Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator. Oleg Khlevniuk, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov (Yale University Press) Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia. Dominic Lieven (Penguin) Russia and the New World Disorder. Bobo Lo (Brookings Institution) Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia. Alfred Rieber (Cambridge University Press) The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991. Robert Service (Pan Macmillan)

The winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2016 will be announced at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday 26 April, the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. These are the shortlisted books

Mercury by Mohamed Rabie A Sky Close to our House by Shahla Ujayli Numedia by Tareq Bakari Praise for the Women of the Family by Mahmoud Shukair Guard of the Dead by George Yaraq Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust and the Nakba by Rabai al-Madhoun

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.