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First-person features

From opinion pieces to personal experiences, the 600+ titles in the Booker Library inspire a range of views.

Browse our first-person features

How to organise your bookshelves

First person

Shelf control: How to organise your bookshelves

Black and white photo of Kazuo Ishiguro, writing at his desk.

First person

A crash course in novel writing: how Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day in a month

Martin Vovt reading and ranking every Booker Prize-winning book in under a year

First person

Long read

What I learnt from reading and ranking every Booker Prize-winning book

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe delivers the Booker Prize 2023 keynote speech

First person

'Books took me to another world': how fiction offered Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe a literary lifeline

Paul Murray on Thomas Pynchon

First person

Long read

Paul Murray on Thomas Pynchon: ‘His vision of the future feels more prescient every day’

Sarah Bernstein on Marie Ndiaye

First person

Long read

Sarah Bernstein on Marie NDiaye: ‘Her characters and settings remain opaque, they keep their secrets’

Paul Harding on Shakespeare

First person

Long read

Paul Harding on Shakespeare’s villains: ‘I want my characters to wrestle with their best and worst impulses’

Hilary Mantel 2014

First person

Hilary Mantel: How I came to write Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel hugs Nicholas Pearson on winning the Booker Prize 2012

Long read

First person

'Suddenly she was into her stride': Nicholas Pearson on publishing Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall

Robot using typewriter

First person

Long read

Why AI will never supplant human novelists – or win the Booker Prize

Max Porter on The Vegetarian

First person

Max Porter on publishing The Vegetarian: 'Everyone agreed that this was an important book'

Sara Collins The Long Song teaser

First person

Sara Collins on Andrea Levy: She changed our minds about history

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

First person

The Long Song by Andrea Levy, in the author’s own words

Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023

First person

Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter playlist: the prize-winning novel in 12 songs

Ben Okri

Long read

First person

Video

Ben Okri: How I wrote The Famished Road

Dua Lipa_A Little Life

Book recommendations

First person

Dua Lipa on A Little Life: ‘It challenged everything I thought I knew about love'

Bob Jackson on A Little Life

First person

Book recommendations

A Little Life: 'I forged a deep connection with vulnerable, determined Jude'

Portrait of Martin Amis

Long read

First person

Should Martin Amis have won the Booker Prize?

Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in Remains of the day, standing by a window.

First person

Long read

Video

How The Remains of the Day changed the way I think about England

Penelope Lively

Long read

First person

Video

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively speaks to readers now more strongly than ever