Christy Lefteri on books that have influenced her

Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial by Peter Stott.

A climate scientist, his book was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2022, and for the Royal Society for Literature Christopher Bland Prize of 2022. It’s basically about how hard the fight was to get international recognition of human-induced climate change and how various people worked to sabotage that science.

He writes about how there was a huge battle to rise above the climate change denialists. I read this as I was finishing my book and when I was doubting myself. But after I finished reading the book, it settled me. When I met him I thanked him and we’ve been in touch ever since. We’re doing a talk together for the Oxford Literary Festival in March.

Engaging With Climate Change Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives by Sally Weintrobe.

She is a psychoanalyst. It is a collection of essays from different psychoanalysts and people from the social science disciplines. Whereas Stott’s book was largely on how to get sceptical governments to recognise climate change, this one is about our personal human response to climate change and why it’s easy for us to deny it. The pieces are analytical and delve into different emotions in slow motion.

Drive Your Plough Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk.

She won the Nobel prize a few years ago. I read it when I was writing ‘Songbirds’ but it stayed with me. It’s set in a remote Polish village and at the beginning of the book there is a murder.

Through its main character, an old lady, you learn about Polish history, the landscape, the animals and the way we treat our environment. It’s beautiful and I loved the way the murder mystery is a gentle aspect of the novel, but it holds it together. There’s a lot in there about animal rights and how animals are treated, which influenced me when I was the writing of ‘The Book of Fire’.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

This is probably my favourite book and has always influenced me no matter what I’m writing, and the reason for that is its style. It’s the way she gets into the character’s mind, the stream of consciousness she uses — I don’t overuse stream of consciousness. However, it influences me in how she gets into her character’s emotions and the political and social things that are going on in the background, and the way she allows those things to drift into the story. I love that the reality of the world exists in the mind of this woman. You learn so much about her world, and her relationship with that world and the war, and with people.

The Overstory by Richard Powers.

I read it just before writing ‘The Book of Fire’. I enjoyed the different stories encapsulated and the beautiful stories about trees. As you read it, you kind of get the overstory, which is the story of the humans, and the understory, which is the story of nature. I love that he’s created these different narratives, these different people’s stories, and within each of them is their relationship with nature. However, I must admit it got a bit repetitive towards the end. In spite of that, I adored it, and it stayed with me.