On the night table

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This article was published 21/06/2025 (395 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Guy Gavriel Kay

Author, Written on the Dark

I often give shout outs to authors I’ve loved, not so much authors I’ve just read — but I’ve just read Karen Russell’s new novel The Antidote, which is being talked up as a potential Pulitzer Prize winner. And I enjoyed that.

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I love Patrick Modiano, the French Nobel Prize Laureate; I think he’s a sorcerer as a writer. I love Penelope Fitzgerald, the English writer — A.S. Byatt said she’s the greatest English writer since the Second World War, which is pretty hyperbolic, but anybody who gets that said about them has something going for them.

I read primarily contemporary fiction, and re-read a lot. As I get older, every fourth or fifth book I read is going back to something I loved. It’s nervous making, because you might go back to a book you loved when you were an undergrad or 30 years old, or 15 years old, and find that it’s not so great. It’s a relief, almost, to re-read something 30 or 40 years later and say, ‘wow, this really is good’ — you feel good about yourself.