My earliest reading memory
I was living in Leningrad and there was a book called The Wonderful Adventure of Nils Holgersson, by a Swedish author, Selma Lagerlöf. It inspired me to write my first book when I was five, called Lenin and His Magical Goose, in which Lenin meets a magical Armenian goose and they invade Finland together and make it socialist.
My favourite book growing up
I really liked Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. By this point I had arrived in America and had difficulty figuring out what the county was all about. That Mark Twain guy really explained it to me. Also, it was my first real foray into humour and I never looked back.
