My earliest reading memory
Enid Blyton’s The Adventures of Mr Pink-Whistle. A pixie-man with a black cat who went around helping children and putting things right. He could turn invisible and had a crew of magic friends who assisted on his missions. He was my hero at age six, and I didn’t think his name was anything other than gangster.
My favourite book growing up
The Choose Your Own Adventure series by Edward Packard and others. Aside from the interactive element, it was my first introduction to horror, science fiction, thrillers, whodunnits and westerns; also good training for writing novels in the second person.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. I’d grown up watching Vietnam war movies on VHS. Even though I knew this short-story collection wouldn’t resemble Rambo or Missing in Action, I was dazzled by its lessons in storytelling, truth and loss, as it dawned on me why Vietnamese soldiers never featured as characters in all those popcorn action movies.
The writer who changed my mind
As a Sri Lankan writer in the 1990s, I had a few accomplished authors to look up to, including Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera and Shyam Selvadurai. But I never thought I could write like any of them. That changed with Carl Muller’s The Jam Fruit Tree, the first part of his Burgher trilogy. Just as Kurt Cobain convinced me I should play guitar, Uncle Carl told me that it was OK to write like a Sri Lankan person speaks. Turned out I couldn’t play guitar very well, but I could certainly write like a drunken uncle.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. As much as Goldman tries to portray the writer in Hollywood as a hapless and absurd figure, for me every adventure was heroic, even when our hero was being patronised by stars and studio execs. I wished I could write like Goldman, with charm, warmth, swagger, insight and wisdom. Plus there are lessons here on the craft of writing and the craftiness required to survive in the business where “no one knows anything”.
The book or author I came back to
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. More of my Vietnam war story fetish. I didn’t understand Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now as a teenager and its source material baffled me more, but I have since seen every version multiple times, and am finally able to appreciate the horror and pathos of this classic novella.
The book I reread
I read Sum by David Eagleman every year, sometimes twice. It contains 40 stories or vignettes, each a page or two long. Each tale opens new doors in your consciousness and the book seems to change every time I read it. Mind-blowing stuff that should be made compulsory in schools.
The book I could never read again
Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead was the first novel I couldn’t complete, and taught me it was OK and sometimes honourable not to finish a book. While I didn’t fully get its politics at the time, I was mostly undone by the leaden prose and unpalatable characters. Every student from India I met at college had read it, and some even recommended it.
The book I discovered later in life
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I arrived at the great 19th-century novelists quite late. And while I appreciated Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Brontës, I didn’t love them like I do this book and its brutal author. I don’t believe I’m the first or the last to feel this way.
The book I am currently reading
I’m making my way through the tremendous Booker longlist that I was lucky to be part of. I haven’t had much time to read lately, but Percival Everett’s hard-boiled satire The Trees has kept me strange company on my travels. The jokes are at a register that I enjoy, as is the darkness. I didn’t think castration was a laughing matter, but apparently it can be.
My comfort read
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. The copy I own has the offensive original title next to hanging golliwogs on the cover. I read it every few years just to savour the craft and the characters. Did Dame Agatha invent the slasher horror with this classic whodunnit? I think every horror film from Friday the 13th to Scream to the masterful The Cabin in the Woods owes her a debt.
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