He also went on to recommend a number of other books, including:

Shakespeare’s The Tempest
V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
Liu Cixin’s the Three-Body Problem series
Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
The works of Junot Díaz, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Jhumpa Lahiri
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

However, when asked to recommend a specific book for this moment in time – one that would “capture this sense of turmoil” – Obama had the perfect answer.

“At this moment, there are a whole bunch of writers, a lot of them young, who are probably writing the book I need to read,” he said. “They’re ahead of me right now. And so in my post-presidency, in addition to training the next generation of leaders to work on issues like climate change or gun violence or criminal justice reform, my hope is to link them up with their peers who see fiction or nonfiction as an important part of that process.

“When so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalisation and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify – as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalise – is more important than ever.”

These are the books that President Obama wants everyone to read