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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway: ‘I loathed Charles Dickens – it nearly turned me off reading for ever’

Nick Harkaway.
‘David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is so good that it infuriated me into starting a novel’ … Nick Harkaway. Photograph: Felicity McCabe

My earliest reading memory
I read The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien at seven, in my bedroom in the deep west of Cornwall. I secretly believed that Rivendell was based on that house, which it clearly wasn’t.

My favourite book growing up
Impossible. I’m inconstant, so it was whatever I was reading at the time. Let’s say Finn Family Moomintroll, which is the most perfect of Tove Jansson’s lovely (and occasionally frankly terrifying) Moomin books.

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