EMMA DONOGHUE

The Man Booker Prize-listed Irish-canadian author’s new historic novel is set on a remote island

What inspired the dramatic setting for Haven on the island of Skellig off Ireland? A boat trip around the Skelligs back in 2016: I looked up at those staircases painstakingly cut into the cliffs by the monks who lived there (roughly 600-1200 AD) and by the end of the journey I had the whole story of Haven in my head. When inspiration strikes fast like that, there’s nothing more thrilling!

Is there a book that made you love writing? Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was the first book that made me notice style, and its beautifully calm advice still holds.

What’s the best book you’ve read? Right now, it’s Adam Nicholson’s The Sea is not made of Water: Life between the Tides. It does some dazzling genre-pivots; you think it’s about prawns and suddenly it’s about philosophy.

A book that had a pivotal impact on your life? Jeanette Winterson’s

The Passion was the first lesbianthemed novel I read that seemed to have high literary ambition, and it made me realise that writing on lesbian themes didn’t have to mean writing trash.

The book you couldn’t finish? So many! Since having kids I toss books aside by page 50. It’s like speeddating; if it doesn’t work for me I don’t worry about why, I just move on.

A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to? William Faulkner but clearly I should.

The book you are most proud to have written? Probably Room, because Jack’s situation as a kid growing up in a locked room seems to seize readers of all stripes.

Your earliest reading memory?

Our family had a big battered hardback, some kind of “children’s treasury”, with poems as well as excerpts from many of the great works of children’s literature.

How do you read books? I prefer paper, but always have e-books on my phone in case I’m at a bus stop at night or something. Audio I rarely get around to but love it when I do – it’s really halfway to radio drama. George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo is the best

I’ve encountered.

Your favourite place to read? I don’t know how to answer that because when I’m reading a book I’m in it, not in my own body.

What book do you re-read? I rarely find time to re-read but, being based in Paris this year, I’ve gone back to Graham Robb’s extraordinary history The Discovery of France.

What books are on your bedside table? Mostly proof copies sent by publishers in the hope that I’ll puff them.

What are you writing next? I’m doing rewrites on Learned by Heart, a novel about 19thcentury diarist Anne Lister’s first love affair. It’s out August 2023. Haven by Emma Donoghue,

Picador, $33