Sadanand Dhume is a Washington-based writer and the author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).

FORBES: Canings, cows' heads and ethnoreligious apartheid.

The blurb on the back cover said that the writer had worked for years as a tour guide in Cuba and Africa and that his travels had influenced his writing.

NEWYORKER: Creative Writing