Hari Kunzru: I am just as enchanted by The Great Gatsby now as when I first read it as an A-level student'

My favourite book growing up JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I craved escape, and it was a long enough book to live inside for weeks at a time.

The book that changed me as a teenager Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land had a profound effect on me. It's essentially a version of Dostoevsky's The Idiot with a young man raised by Martians as the observer and eventual victim of the world's follies.

The book that made me want to be a writer I must have decided to be a writer at some point, but I can't remember when that was. If a book is really good, it makes me want to write.

The writer who changed my mind Writers are always doing that. The book that made me want to be a writer I must have decided to be a writer at some point, but I can't remember when that was. If a book is really good, it makes me want to write. It's an aesthetic gut instinct if I feel a mixture of pleasure and excitement and confrontation, salted with a little jealousy, then I'm reading a really good book.

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