Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he spent several years teaching in Japan, and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.
My favourite books of the decade are:
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The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Seven years after reading this novel about Victorian perfumier and his mistress, Sugar, its scenes come back to haunt me, probably weekly. Dickens on the surface, Pynchon down below. Language, verve, narrative mastery, an incredible assembly of characters, sense of time and place - this wonderful writer delivers on all counts.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
There can't be many readers' radars this one didn't at least blip on, but if you avoided this book because half the world was reading it at the time, you have a memorable treat in store. An unpatronizing, informative, in-the-skull story of a boy with Asperger's Syndrome, this short novel deserves to stay in print forever.
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Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk
A glory of a boyhood-and-youth memoir, a warts'n'more portrait of a family in gentle decline, an exploration of a city on a crossroads of geography and history, and a great writer turning his soul inside out: this beautiful book has all the merits of Pamuk's estimable novels, and even happens to be true.
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Ian Mortimer has BA and PhD degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. From 1991 to 2003 he worked for Devon Record Office, Reading University, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, and Exeter University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998, and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine.
My favourite books of the decade are:
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The Man who Believed he was King of France by Tommaso de Carpegna Falconieri
The true story - or as close to the truth as we are ever likely to have - about Giannino di Guccio, who believed he was really John I of France. A mystery, logically put together and reconstructed despite old-school historical anti-revisionism, full of human warmth. It's not often you get a methodological essay and pathos in one book.
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I am the Great Horse by Katherine Roberts
A children's story: the story of Alexander the Great - as seen through the eyes of his horse, Bucephalus. It's a long, well-researched saga, enthralling and inventive. I read it to my eldest son as his bedtime story over several months and we both were in tears at the end!
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Being Shelley by Ann Wroe
Ann Wroe is, quite simply the most imaginative and exciting writer of non-fiction working today. In Pilate (1999) she told the story of an imagined and re-imagined character down the centuries. In Perkin (2003) she retold the story of Perkin Warbeck in a way that was both lyrical and historical, raising awareness of both the period and the timeless question of identity. In Being Shelley she illustrates the poetic spirit, reaching out for what Shelley himself yearned for. Any of these books could be here on this list: all are thoroughly recommended.
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Joseph O'Connor was born in Dublin. He has written ten widely acclaimed and bestselling books including the novels Cowboys and Indians, shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize, Desperadoes, The Salesman, and most recently Inishowen. His work has been published in eighteen languages.
My favourite books of the decade are:
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The Speckled People by Hugo Hamilton
One of the finest memoirs I've read is Hugo Hamilton's The Speckled People, an account of being raised in 1960s Dublin by a devoutly Catholic German mother and an Irish nationalist father who outlawed the speaking of English in his home. His mother forced the author and his brother to wear lederhosen, while dad insisted on traditional Aran sweaters. 'We were Irish on top and German below,' Hamilton remarks, in this powerful autobiography of a cultural outsider. It's the greatest book I know about childhood.
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In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
I found In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar riveting and deeply haunting.
Its sense of the strangeness of the world is disturbingly powerful, also its atmosphere of scarcely suppressed violence. I was almost afraid to keep turning the pages. The child's perspective, which is often not quite right in novels, was handled with very great skill and restraint. The sentences are beautiful. The book felt crafted but still passionate. I loved the ruined exoticism of the cityscape Matar writes about. This book is a brilliant achievement.
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The Master by Colm Toibin
The Master by Colm Toibin is a magnificent novel that focuses on a few years in the life of the great Henry James. It builds into an extraordinary story about love and art. Everything about Toibin's graceful and deeply truthful work implies that there can still be a sort of morality to the act of making fiction; that fundamental accuracy of description is still worth pursuing in a world where language is debased every day. Novels that escape the domestic and bring us news of the world are still too rare but this one has memorable beauty.
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