The book I’m currently reading I’m having chemotherapy at the moment and I find it difficult to concentrate. When I read, it has to be in short bursts. I’ve got Ben Okri’s compilation of poetry, Rise Like Lions, by my bedside. He groups the poems into categories, such as “protest” and “truth”. In the former is William Wordsworth’s tribute to the man who led the most successful slave revolt, in Haiti, “To Toussaint L’Ouverture”; in the latter is Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”. The book that changed my life Reading The Grapes of Wrath as a teenager made me think of journalism as a career. Steinbeck’s powerful evocation of the injustices visited on the Joad family taught me the power of words. The book I wish I’d written The Cage by Gordon Weiss. As a Sri Lankan-born Briton I have felt guilty that I didn’t try to do more within the BBC to report on the last brutal months of the civil war there. The book that influenced me Almost any Graham Greene novel. Whether it is Sierra Leone in The Heart of the Matter or Vietnam in The Quiet American his flawed, brittle characters find themselves in places where the air is hot and treacly. I’ve made a career out of going to distant lands and I’ve always been more interested in the back streets than the main street. The book that changed my mind Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman. I remember being startled by her distinction between freedom and equality. The book that made me cry I’ve yet to find one, but the closest I got to tears was reading When Breath Becomes Air, in which the neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi describes coming to terms with the prospect of an early death from cancer. The last book that made me laugh Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt had me laughing out loud. It’s a powerful and heartfelt tribute to the NHS – written long before we all started clapping for carers. The book I couldn’t finish I am a finisher, even when the book is rubbish. It says more about me than the books. The book I am ashamed not to have read The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The book I give as a gift One of the Letters of Note series. My favourite is from the Music compilation. It’s a letter from Leonard Cohen to his onetime lover and muse Marianne Ihlen. My earliest reading memory Being read to was not a thing in our family. My father told stories. There were comics; Superman was a favourite. It seems bizarre now – a boy from Ceylon, living in Ghana and fantasising about a superhero raised in Middle America. I don’t think I really started reading books till I got to England and secondary school. My comfort read Charlie Mackesy’s graphic novel The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. It is a balm for uncertain times. “‘Everyone is a bit scared,’ said the horse. ‘But we are less scared together.’” • The Burning Land by George Alagiah is published by Black Thorn.