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Hello, welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Adam Schatz, and I'm sitting here with Olivier

Huas. Olivier Waugh is a professor at the European Institute in Florence. He's one of the most

influential commentators in the West on political Islam, but he's also much more than that. He's one of the most influential commentators in the West on political Islam, but he's also much more than that.

He's also one of our most original thinkers about culture, about the relationship between religion and secularism, and the experience of modernity.

He has recently published two books that have appeared in English,

Jihad and Death and a memoir in interviews in search of the Lost Orient. Welcome, Olivier,

to this podcast. Thank you, Adam. I'd like to start by talking about your memoir.

First of all, what possessed you to write a memoir?

I wanted to write something, you know, about not necessarily my life, but my generation and the connection between our, I would say, private life in a sense, and historical events,

you know, from the 68 to the invasion of

Afghanistan by the Soviets.

And I tried to find a way and it didn't work.

I tried to write a novel.

It was very bad.

I tried to write a diary.

It was very boring.

Unfortunately enough for me, I own some money to my publisher.

You know, he wanted me to write a book in Afghanistan after 9-11.

I took the money, but I didn't write the book.

...