From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe for the Financial Times:
What book changed your life?Read the complete Q & A.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, when I was 17. It thrilled me so profoundly.
* * *What books are on your bedside table?
I’m away from home so on my iPad I have Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I want to see what all the fuss is about.
When did you know you were going to be a writer?
Age 11, after reading The Count of Monte Cristo [by Alexandre Dumas]. But at university I decided writing would not support me.
* * *
Who are your literary influences?
Saul Bellow. He and my father were in high school together. He is the literary recreation of my father’s sensibility and he helped me to come to terms with the world I came from. Dickens has had more direct influence on my style, syntax and grammar than anyone else.
See Scott Turow's five favorite pre-1980 novels about the law.
--Marshal Zeringue