Meg Rosoff

So it's, you know, those novels by women, mainly.

I mean, of course, I love Nabokov and Lolita.

And, you know, I love strange, screwy, dark, odd books.

But I would have to say it's those domestic novels that I love more than anything.

They were indeed.

They were mostly English.

There are people like Barbara Trapito.

I mean, there are so many fabulous books.

female writers who have always been ever so slightly undervalued, I think.

And I'm also slightly obsessed with female explorers.

So one of my great heroes in life was an English woman called Isabella Bird, who was a 19th century explorer.

So there's a lot in my background.

I mean, I read men as well.

I was obsessed with Contiki, Thor Heyerdahl.

as a child and read it over and over and over and over again.

And of course, I loved Catch-22 and, you know, Shakespeare and all that.

But, you know, I studied English literature at Harvard.

And even though I didn't read a huge number of the books I was supposed to be reading for my course, it was kind of my formative influence more than American literature.

Yes.

Well, he kind of snuck in.