The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. I’ve started it three times and cannot get the hang of the patronymic system: every scene appears to have 50 different characters floating in and out. I was reading it just as Donald Trump was losing the election and it read as a roadmap of what he was going to do. This was laughter of recognition rather than cheery joy: Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game is a great nonfiction breakdown of the methods and moves of con artistry. It made me realise that there was a whole other side of the history of partition that I had been oblivious to, a fascinating and tragic one. Not a book but a play: Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme shook me out of a lifelong prejudice against Ulster loyalists. I avoid reading the interviews she gives because I love her books so much I don’t want to know anything about her. You can’t steal from Gardam, she’s just too particular. I cannot understand why everyone hasn’t read Jane Gardam’s Old Filth trilogy: these novels are classics, with glorious writing, stylistic courage and humour. I’ve had editors who suggested changes to my books that made them infinitely better. Each book is a snapshot of a moment in time, an interaction between an editor, a writer and a publisher, and the follow-up Go Set a Watchman makes me think that something magical happened in the original dynamic. I think Lee was right not to keep publishing. I’m still in thrall to the idea that a writer can address the unspeakable by wrapping it up in an engaging narrative.

The book that had the greatest influence on me Envy is the truest compliment any writer can give another, and although Poe is often uneven and a bit gothic for my taste, that short story is one of the best bits of crime writing I’ve ever read. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is so spare and modern and well-paced that I was almost sick with jealousy the moment I finished it.

Denise mina trilogy