The book I am currently reading
Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth.
The book I wish I’d written
Definitely Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. To me, everything about it reflects sheer, seemingly effortless perfection.
The book that is most underrated
I wish Eduardo Galeano was more widely read. I’d make Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History compulsory reading in schools if I had the power.
The book that changed my mind
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Back home in India, BR Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and Jyotirao Phule’s Slavery. Anything that holds up a mirror to how unjust our society is can leave a lasting impression.
The last book that made me cry
Women Workers & the Trade Unions by Sarah Boston. It’s very prosaic and direct – I was reading it for research, but just what female workers had to endure and fight against made me weep with sadness and anger.
The last book that made me laugh
Elaine Castillo’s America Is Not the Heart. It’s not a funny book, but it contains dark humour and so much food, and so much of that food is rice. When you’re a rice-addict glutton like me, you feel a funny, laugh-out-loud connection with it.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
Too many to list – but when I read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, I knew that I wanted to do something as magical with language.
The book I couldn’t finish
I have a tendency to start too many books at once, so quite a few of them end up unfinished for no fault of their own. The last tome I picked up and have yet to finish is Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch. Will get back to it again.
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
I haven’t read any Ursula K Le Guin. I think I have some kind of fear of reading science fiction. A girl reading books all the time was nerdy enough, and I thought that if I read spec-fic/sci-fi, I would become an irrevocable nerd with no hope of salvation.
The book I give as a gift
Used to be The Autobiography of Malcolm X. When I moved here, I found The Communist Manifesto in the form of a Penguin Little Black Classic an excellent choice – it only cost 80p, looks cute and is always worth a (re)read.
The book I’d most like to be remembered for
Perhaps because we are caught up in #MeToo, a feminist revival in which we are no longer putting up with old oppressions When I Hit You seems to be speaking very personally to a lot of women. It’s only my second novel, I’m not done yet. Like everyone who is a novelist, I keep thinking that eventually I will write something that’s unforgettable. It’s some sort of occupational necessity to believe that one’s best is yet to come.
- When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy is on the shortlist for the Women’s prize for fiction, which will be awarded on 6 June. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.
