MY SIX BEST BOOKS
LOUISE DOUGHTY, 53, is the author of Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted for a TV series starring Emily Watson. She also wrote the Costa-shortlisted Whatever You Love. Her latest novel Black Water is now out in paperback (Faber, £7.99). BELOVED
by Toni Morrison
Vintage, £9.99 Probably one of the greatest contemporary novels. It’s about a woman who kills her child rather than see it grow up in slavery.
It opened my eyes to the full emotional horror of slavery, as opposed to just knowing the facts intellectually. And it showed me how powerful fiction could be. A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA
by Ursula Le Guin
Puffin, £6.99 A fantasy trilogy that was the nearest we had in the 1970s to Harry Potter.
It’s about a boy becoming a wizard and travelling to remote islands to fight various demons. Even though I don’t write science fiction, reading it when young showed me there were no limits to the imagination. SURFACING
by Margaret Atwood
Virago, £8.99 This is about a woman going on a camping trip after having an affair and how you have a choice about whether you are a victim or not, particularly in terms of your relationship with men. I would give it to any 25-year-old woman. Atlantic, £8.99 The winner when I was a judge on the Man Booker Prize in 2008. It’s about a servant in India and his rather amoral desire to rise in life. There’s a brilliant scene where he has to wash his master’s feet and it gets over how disgusting it is. ONE OF US THE WHITE TIGER
by Aravind Adiga by Asne Seierstad
Virago, £8.99 An amazing piece of journalism about the Anders Breivik killings in Norway.
It’s a biography of Breivik then running parallel are the stories of two of his victims. By the time you get to the massacre you know what’s at stake. It should be required reading for every counter-terrorism officer as there were opportunities to stop him. IPHIGENIA IN FOREST HILLS
by Janet Malcolm
Yale, £9.99 An account of the murder trial of a Jewish woman from Brooklyn who accused her husband of abusing their child and hired a hitman to kill him.
Malcolm is an excellent writer and it challenges your moral perspective.