Sunjeev Sahota: ‘I’ve never thought of novels as sources of comfort’ | Books

My earliest reading memory
The Tree of Knowledge magazine – remember that? – which I collected, binders and all. I spent hours on my bed taking in everything from Picasso’s blue period to the workings of the inner ear.

My favourite book growing up
I didn’t really read books growing up. It just wasn’t that kind of house.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Probably Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I was 19 and finished it on an overnight coach heading for Chesterfield from Victoria. I felt bereft at the end and suddenly lonely, sitting on the back seat of the coach, rumbling up the dark motorway. It may be true that novels keep you company, but really they spotlight your terrible isolation.

The writer who changed my mind
In The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood tells us that Vladimir Nabokov “never gave interviews without advance notice of the questions, or without having carefully written out and rehearsed his answers, although he did implausibly fake spontaneity now and again”. Reading that made me less hard on myself and my own interviews.

The book that made me want to be a writer
A Fine Balance – see above. After that I knew that novels were these magical, lifelike things and that I wanted to write them, and would. It never occurred to me to doubt myself, to think that writing novels was not something working-class kids from Chesterfield did. I was so full of self-belief back then!

The book I came back to
In my early 20s I thought JL Carr’s novel A Month in the Country boring. Coming to it again years later I found it almost unbearably honest. What restraint. What power. Time; pain; kindness. Everything’s there, along with all the words you didn’t say. And all the ones you did. One of the most sublime and wrenching of English novels.

The book I reread
Poems, mainly. Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The Schoolmaster, by Anton Chekhov, is the only text from my schooldays that has stayed with me. Its silence, its stillness and sadness captivated me, and each time I reread the poem I remember that boy in the classroom.

The book I could never read again
I wanted to gen up on the independence struggle so read Civil Disobedience Movement in the Punjab, 1930-1934 by DR Grover. It was useful, but I don’t see me cracking it open again any time soon.

The author I discovered later in life
Natalia Ginzburg is a wonderful writer, and she’s especially brilliant on postwar England’s desolate corners: piles of scrap iron and coal dust, disused rails, bits of underwear hanging to dry around allotments full of cabbages.

The book I am currently reading
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. It’s very good.

My comfort read
I’ve never thought of novels as sources of comfort. I go to food for that kind of thing. Baking, now that’s comforting.

My earliest reading memory
The Tree of Knowledge magazine – remember that? – which I collected, binders and all. I spent hours on my bed taking in everything from Picasso’s blue period to the workings of the inner ear.

My favourite book growing up
I didn’t really read books growing up. It just wasn’t that kind of house.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Probably Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I was 19 and finished it on an overnight coach heading for Chesterfield from Victoria. I felt bereft at the end and suddenly lonely, sitting on the back seat of the coach, rumbling up the dark motorway. It may be true that novels keep you company, but really they spotlight your terrible isolation.

The writer who changed my mind
In The Magician’s Doubts, Michael Wood tells us that Vladimir Nabokov “never gave interviews without advance notice of the questions, or without having carefully written out and rehearsed his answers, although he did implausibly fake spontaneity now and again”. Reading that made me less hard on myself and my own interviews.

The book that made me want to be a writer
A Fine Balance – see above. After that I knew that novels were these magical, lifelike things and that I wanted to write them, and would. It never occurred to me to doubt myself, to think that writing novels was not something working-class kids from Chesterfield did. I was so full of self-belief back then!

The book I came back to
In my early 20s I thought JL Carr’s novel A Month in the Country boring. Coming to it again years later I found it almost unbearably honest. What restraint. What power. Time; pain; kindness. Everything’s there, along with all the words you didn’t say. And all the ones you did. One of the most sublime and wrenching of English novels.

The book I reread
Poems, mainly. Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The Schoolmaster, by Anton Chekhov, is the only text from my schooldays that has stayed with me. Its silence, its stillness and sadness captivated me, and each time I reread the poem I remember that boy in the classroom.

The book I could never read again
I wanted to gen up on the independence struggle so read Civil Disobedience Movement in the Punjab, 1930-1934 by DR Grover. It was useful, but I don’t see me cracking it open again any time soon.

The author I discovered later in life
Natalia Ginzburg is a wonderful writer, and she’s especially brilliant on postwar England’s desolate corners: piles of scrap iron and coal dust, disused rails, bits of underwear hanging to dry around allotments full of cabbages.

The book I am currently reading
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh. It’s very good.

My comfort read
I’ve never thought of novels as sources of comfort. I go to food for that kind of thing. Baking, now that’s comforting.