Reading List
Muhammad Yunus
Economist and Nobel Laureate
Muhammad Yunus began lending his own money to basket weavers in a village near Chittagong in 1976, having concluded that the poor were not poor for lack of skill but for lack of capital on terms that were not ruinous. Grameen Bank grew from that into an institution lending to millions, mostly women, without collateral. He and the bank shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
His books include Banker to the Poor, Creating a World Without Poverty and A World of Three Zeros, which set out his idea of social business, meaning companies designed to solve a problem rather than to maximise return. He was an economics professor at Chittagong University before the bank, and served as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government in 2024.
Germinal
by Émile Zola
“Both Germinal and A Tale of Two Cities made an impression on me. They are about the lives of poor people and the kind of life they lead in poverty. In Bangladesh it’s all about poverty, the extreme poverty you see around you and you want to do something about it. These books talk about poverty in Europe.” — via Interview, September 2010
Selected Short Stories
by Rabindranath Tagore
“No, but we were part of the British colony so we had lots of connection with English literature and I don’t mention the local language because it doesn’t make any sense to you. But local literature is more influential for me than European literature – Rabindranath Tagore stories, for example, about poor families and their struggle with their life.” — Source
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens · 1859 · Fiction
“Both Germinal and A Tale of Two Cities made an impression on me. They are about the lives of poor people and the kind of life they lead in poverty. In Bangladesh it’s all about poverty, the extreme poverty you see around you and you want to do something about it. These books talk about poverty in Europe.” — Source
