Adam Thirlwell

Adam Thirlwell is the author of The Delighted States: A Book of Novels, Romances, & Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, & Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, & a Variety of Helpful Indexes (UK title: Miss Herbert). His first novel, Politics, was translated into thirty languages. In 2003, he appeared on Granta’s list of the best British novelists under forty.

From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:

Who are your literary influences?

Laurence Sterne, Milan Kundera, PG Wodehouse, Robert Musil, Gertrude Stein, Denis Diderot, Bohumil Hrabal, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh and Henry James.

* * *

Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?

Vladimir Nabokov, because he was so charming and so enclosed. But I’m not sure I’d like to be stuck in a lift with anyone – it would give me terrible claustrophobia and social inadequacy.

Who would you choose to play you in a film about your life?

For the jowly infantile face, Robert Downey Jr. For the height, Tom Cruise. For the winsome, sad eyes, Winona Ryder.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue