Ali Smith

Ali Smith is the author of the novels Hotel World—short-listed for both the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize—and The Accidental, which won the Whitbread Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Her latest novel is There But For The.

From her Q & A with Dan Eltringham at the Financial Times:

What book do you wish you’d written?

The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth.

* * *
What book changed your life?

A Calendar of Love by George Mackay Brown.

* * *
What is the oddest thing you’ve done when researching a book?

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

* * *
If you could own any painting, what would it be?

The wall fresco of St Catherine, by Masolino, in the church of San Clemente in Rome.

* * *
What novel would you give a child to introduce them to literature?

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson or Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland.

Read the complete interview.

Learn about the "deceased author [Smith would] most like to watch crossing a room, just to see how she moves."

--Marshal Zeringue