Most of the time. The first book I ever read and loved was... I was given a copy of Janet and John and their dog Rover when I started school at terrifying place called Klerksdorp Primary. It had pictures and a mother with tidy hair and I longed for a world as orderly as theirs. I still do. I wouldn't be where I am today without... Without being born into a family of readers. The first thing anyone in my family asks is, 'Have you read....?' And then they give you a new book. Books are to life what... Sex is to love. Without them - sex or books - there's not much spice. Every child should be required to read... Instead of watching television. Essentials are: AA Milne: When We Were Very Young & Now We are Six - to understand change. Roald Dahl: All of his children's books, in which all bad children come to such a bad end – to understand natural justice. The back page of the Sunday Times - the best sex education in South Africa. I can't write if... I'm washing up. (I never wash up.) In another life I would have been... An explorer. Freya Stark perhaps. I'd never have become a writer if I hadn't read... Wuthering Heights. Imagine being able to create the electricity between Cathy and Heathcliff? That's what I wanted to do. The best book I've read in a long while was... Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men The worst book I've ever read was... The Chicken Soup books. They give you brain rot. When I'm not writing I... Garden and think about writing. If it's dark, then I drink wine and smoke and talk about writing. Either way I'm a pain and I neglect my family. I'm at my most contented when... I'm alone, at home, writing. I'm at my most discontented when... When I want to be alone and can't be. My favourite hero of fiction is... Lady Macbeth. She's evil, I know, but that 'unsex me here' speech of hers was the first time I realised that as a woman you can remake yourself if there is something you really want to achieve. Macbeth, on the other hand, is a blood thirsty wimp. My favourite hero in real life is... Aung San Syu Ki, in house arrest in Burma. She just won't go away. My greatest extravagance is... Plants. My most treasured possession is... My laptop. The worst day of my life was... When I finished my first book. I thought I would feel free. Instead I just had to start the next one. The best advice I ever got was... About my writing: 'glimmers of intelligence' was the comment on a university honours paper by my English professor, who later went on to win a Nobel prize. The three people I would most like to invite over for dinner... Bessie Head, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anna Karenina. If my house was on fire, I would save.... My laptop and my children. I suppose not in that order. Interview by Michelle Magwood of the Sunday Times |
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E-mail: margie@margieorford.com | Agent: www.blakefriedmann.co.uk |
