Justin Huggler is a novelist and journalist.

A former war correspondent for The Independent, he accepted the surrender of a Taliban commander in Afghanistan in 2001, and was in a 150mph car chase to escape kidnappers in Iraq in 2004.

He has been under fire in the Gaza Strip, detained at the gunpoint of a tank in Bethlehem, and crossed into Serbia with a forged visa to cover the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic.

The Guardian called his first novel, The Burden of the Desert, “vivid and utterly convincing” and the Daily Mail described it as “an absolute must”.

His new book, The Return Home, was published in April. The Sunday Telegraph has named it as its Book Club Choice.

He lived in India for eight years, and now lives in Berlin, where he writes for the Daily Telegraph