I have introduced a new page: INFLUENCES: a reading list.

In 2012 I rediscovered the wonderful prose of Albert Camus. The final sentences of The Stranger are spellbinding. I unearthed Michel Houellebecq’s The map and the territory and Atomised, was delighted by the fact or fiction HHhH by Laurent Binet. And finally two notable reads: at the fourth attempt of Alexis Wright’s wildly roving Carpentaria I breeched the 50 page mark and then cruised all over the Gulf country to the unexpected end, and after five years of promising to read it I ploughed through the literary head-trip of Joyce’s Ulysses (which proves that writers a century ago were far more adventurous and educated than readers today) to the final touching end and when asked if I would I read it again I reply ‘yes I said yes I will Yes.’

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself, so like a brother, really, I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only one wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Albert Camus, The Stranger (final sentences), translated by Matthew Ward