Show 17: the Booker Prize winner on his current top bedtime books...
"I used to go out and buy three, or four, or five books, I I’d only read one or none of them. Now, I buy one book at a time, and I read one at a time. The Spare Room by Helen Garner I think this is an extraordinary book. Unfortunately, you’re gong to have to wait, because it doesn’t come out until June, I think. It’s the story of a woman who live on her own, who has a spare room. Her friend, who is dying of cancer, arrives to stay. You would think this would be the most horrible thing to read about – and of course, it’s full of its horrors – but it’s beautifully written, extraordinarily moving and very funny. I really think it’s a great book. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth I’d never read Roth. I don’t really want to say what it’s about, although of course it’s set in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire…but what do we read for? We read for the words on the page, and the words on the page in this book are extraordinarily beautiful and fantastically textures. The physical and human world that it evokes is full of delight."
Image copyright: Ashley Gilbertson