I might also mention the nine-volume Sahih Al-Bukhari. This particular anthology of the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad was recommended to me by the Taliban when I visited their country in 2000. Here is a line from Bukhari that I like very much: “Narrated Abdullah bin Amr: A man asked the Prophet, ‘Whose Islam is good?’ The Prophet replied, ‘One who feeds others and greets those whom he knows and those whom he does not know.’ ” I might add that in my travels through Muslim countries I have again and again found myself the grateful beneficiary of that expression of faith.

Your writing often concerns issues of war and violence. What do you consider to be the best works of war fiction and nonfiction?

There are so many “bests”! Fifteen come to mind: the “Iliad”; Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate”; Thucydides’ “Peloponnesian War”; Lucan’s “Civil War”; Milovan Djilas’s “Wartime”; A. Anatoli Kuznetsov’s “Babi Yar”; Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”; and Tadeusz Konwicki’s underappreciated masterpiece “A Dreambook for Our Time,” which is one of the many treasures in the late, lamented Penguin “Writers From the Other Europe” series. I’d better not forget the anonymous Japanese “Tale of the Heike,” whose relation of hubris and fall may be unequaled in pathos. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is another obvious choice, although war is actually not the core of it. Donald Cameron Watt’s “How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War” is fascinating and almost suspenseful, even though we know how the peace negotiations will turn out. Sherman’s memoirs, as literature far superior to Grant’s, create an unforgettable autoportrait of this brilliant, angry, ruthless warrior. The Library of America volume on our Revolutionary War contains eye-opening primary sources, detailing miserable forced marches, treason, bravery, atrocities in Indian country — not to mention that terroristic upstart Benjamin Franklin, who answered back to his British betters “with rather a sneering laugh.” Michael Walzer’s “Just and Unjust Wars” is a very important ethical treatment of the subject. T. E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” is written with feeling and elegance, and sometimes achieves an epic quality (well, he did translate the “Odyssey”).

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?

Probably Sigrid Undset’s strong-willed, sensual, self-destructive and ultimately rock-solid Kristin Lavransdatter, to whom I was introduced by my mother when I was young. Kristin’s eponymous trilogy bears many rereadings. Right away one somehow identifies with this daughter of medieval Norway; soon one compassionates her in her sufferings. Then one grows to notice that she is often the architect of her own misery. But this is not the last word on Kristin, who for all her faults inspires love in many around her, including this reader. Her faith and loyalty make her quite beautiful to me. Like Murasaki and Dos Passos, Undset tells the story of a whole life. The end of any life can be fearful, and Kristin’s final days are gruesome, but unlike Undset’s other great protagonist, Olav of Hestviken (who gets his own tetralogy), Kristin leaves behind her some kind of light.

If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?

“A Tomb for Boris Davidovich,” by Danilo Kis, whose lyrical concision I admire from far below. His interrelated characters, who occasionally make cameo appearances in each other’s stories, play vivid parts in a Stalinist drama whose grim vastness invariably swallows them up. My novel “Europe Central” was homage to Kis. Unfortunately, I tend to be a wordier sort.

You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited?

Any three who are already my friends.

What book hasn’t been written that you’d like to read? And what book has been written that you wish you’d never read?