Faber & Faber

What do writers read? Petina Gappah, whose An Elegy for Easterly has won the Guardian First Book Award for 2009, reveals the books that have made her laugh, cry, kept her awake at night, and more.

The book that ... I loved as a child ...

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streitfield. I wanted to be an orphan and be adopted by Gum (Great-Uncle Matthew) and live with Garnie and Nana and Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil on the Cromwell Road and take lessons with the Professors and dance lessons with Theo Dane and earn money as an actor in Shakespeare's plays and visit the doll's house collection at the Victoria and Albert on rainy Sundays.  Curious aspirations for a child living in Zimbabwe but that's the power of books.

I last read ...

Harare North by Brian Chikwava. Read it and weep. With laughter.

I keep by bedside ...

The Book of Revelation and The Book of Job in one slim volume. Good for dipping in and out of. However gloomy my day has been, the story of poor Job puts it all into perspective. And The Book of Revelation is so wonderfully weird it is guaranteed to give you the most vivid dreams ever.

I want to read next ...

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

I recommend to everyone ...

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Moon Palace by Paul Auster. Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.

Kept me awake at night ...

A book called Let's Go Play At The Adams. Just reading it made me feel complicit in all the vileness within.

Made me laugh ...

The Rumpole books by John Mortimer.

Made me cry ...

I read to my son ...

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. They are making this into a film. Sacrilege.

Lord of the Flies, which I read as a teenager.

Changed my life ...

This Book Will Change Your Life by A. M. Holmes. 

No, not really. But it is a great title, I wish I had thought of it.

Opened my horizons ...

Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?, a Shona novel by Zimbabwean writer Charles Mungoshi. It showed me the amazing possibilities of my native Shona language, and how it was possible to write a literary novel that was firmly rooted in the modern world while celebrating the roots and beauty of the language.