The inspirations behind my Booker-longlisted book 

I think I wanted to explore the bond between mothers and their children. On one hand, it’s the most ordinary, mundane, taken-for-granted thing in the world… on the other hand, it’s deeply mysterious. In the case of a mother and child who’ve been separated since birth, for example, often there is a pull towards each other that lasts a whole lifetime. These are people who don’t know each other, who’ve basically never ‘met’ – and yet they yearn to be together. Why is that? It seems to defy rational explanation.   

The book that made me fall in love with reading 

Just one book? In the beginning, there was Enid Blyton, then C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Ursula le Guin. All the horsey Pullein-Thompson books. Peanuts. The Far Side. The 36-volume encyclopaedia in the bookshelf in the hall at home. Medical textbooks. Things Fall Apart, by Achebe. I didn’t think of it as love of reading, exactly – more like a grafting onto one’s consciousness, an expansion of the self.   

The book that made me want to become a writer 

One of our O-level texts in Trinidad was a play by Derek Walcott called Ti-Jean and His Brothers. It’s about three brothers from a poor family in rural Trinidad who pit themselves against the Devil. It was my first experience of a story that seemed to belong to us – the Caribbean – and that was told to us in our own language. It was thrilling. One felt as if one were being welcomed onto a huge stage, invited to join the party. I’m grateful to him for that. 

The book I read again and again 

The Enigma of Arrival, by V.S. Naipaul. It’s centred around his time living in Wiltshire, and it documents a journey of seeing and understanding, or a journey of learning to see and understand. I’m aware he’s a controversial writer, both hated and revered. I’ve learned a lot from reading him. 

The book that changed the way I think about the world 

This is non-fiction, but The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Of course, I knew a little bit about genes already, but the way he put it was just so plain and bleak. Something along the lines of: humans are made from genes which are strands of chemicals whose only goal is to copy themselves; that’s all life really is – you can abandon the search for higher meaning, because there is none. I’m sure I’ve paraphrased that badly, but that’s the general idea. In any case, I had to close the book to pause and absorb the enormity of that, and I don’t think I’ve ever fully recovered from it. 

The book that changed the way I think about the novel 

Every good book makes me reassess, actually – every book makes its own new version of the world. I return to Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson a lot. I feel the author has allowed the language to create its own path in that book: it’s as if the language leads, and the author follows. 

The book I’m reading right now 

Anna Karenina – for the first time, and with great joy. 

The Booker-nominated book everyone should read 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I doubt Ishiguro meant it to carry any kind of political or moralistic message, but it gives us a glimpse of what the new two-tier system of humanity might look like. One tier being ‘ordinary’ or ‘old-fashioned’ humans, and the other being humans bio-engineered or created for the benefit of the others. 

Where and when I most like to write, and the tools I need 

I do most of my work at my kitchen table at home. I tend to do best when the household has gone quiet, usually late evening. If I’m doing well, I’ll happily work into the wee hours. I sometimes listen to a ‘tropical rainstorm’ track from YouTube on headphones. 

My dream book club, what we’d read, and where we’d meet 

I’m not in a book club, but this question has made me think it would be nice to have a book group with my siblings and mum. We’re spread between the UK and the US, so we’d meet over Zoom. Knowing us, we’d be quite systematic: someone would draw up a spreadsheet, and we’d alternate between reading contemporary fiction, classics, science and art. Now that I’ve written this, maybe it’ll happen!