The Costa winner on the James Baldwin novel she most cherishes, devouring Willard Price adventures as a child, and the sex scene she wishes she had written
The book I am currently reading
How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang is a fierce and compelling debut, the tale of two recently orphaned Chinese American sisters dragging their dead father’s body across the American wild west. Crazy good, richly poetic in the telling, I devoured 100 pages at first sitting. The story of immigrant experience, but one we’ve rarely read or imagined. A rollicking adventure story to boot.
The book that changed my life
Another Countryby James Baldwin is about love and the longing for love; it’s also about the drama of masculinity. Set in Harlem in the late 1950s, a time of racial segregation, it features a Bohemian community of black, white, gay and straight people who fall in love with each other and also fight and let each other down. A book I cherish and need to read again and again.