WHAT BOOK would 新聞記者／雑誌記者 and author Marcus Berkmann take to a 砂漠 island?

• e-mail

…are you reading now??

The Hidden 暗殺者s, by Robert Wilson. I’m a 抱擁する fan of this writer of 広大な l?iterary thrillers ― this one is 642 pages long ― 始める，決める in Spain and Portugal.?

Really 井戸／弁護士席 written, skilfully plotted, this is a superior page-turner with so many characters you almost feel relieved when one of them jumps off an eighth-床に打ち倒す balcony, or turns up in a waste 貯蔵所 with his 手渡すs 削減（する） off and his 直面する burnt away by 酸性の. It means there’s one いっそう少なく of them to worry about.

Marcus Berkmann (pictured) is 現在／一般に reading The Hidden 暗殺者s by Robert Wilson. The author and 新聞記者／雑誌記者 would take The Collected 作品 of P.G. Wodehouse to a 砂漠 island

…would you take to a 砂漠 island??

The collected 作品 of P.G. Wodehouse. A bit of a cheat, I realise, as he wrote 90-半端物 調書をとる／予約するs, but I 港／避難所’t got tired of them yet and they 知らせる my own 令状ing like nothing else. Whenever I read one, my prose jumps a level or two. My jokes are better 表明するd and my paragraphs sing rather than croak like Leonard Cohen. It’s pure joy distilled into words. I am not sure any greater humorous writer has ever 存在するd.?

…first gave you the reading bug??

The Tintin 調書をとる／予約するs. On a holiday to Majorca in 1968, when I was eight, I took The Red Sea Sharks and The 黒人／ボイコット Island and I read them so often I could probably have 行為／法令／行動するd them out. I try to ration them now, because there are only two dozen, but it might be time to 下落する into The Calculus 事件／事情／状勢 or Herg?’s late, 幻覚的な m?asterpiece Flight 714 To Sydney.?

My favourites are the two Moon 調書をとる／予約するs, 目的地 Moon and Explorers On The Moon, which 正確に 予報するd the nature of the Moon’s surface 15 or so years before anyone landed there, and that there was water about 50 years before scientists 立証するd it. What storytelling! What draughtsmanship! What jokes! As Captain Haddock would say, when わずかに riled: ‘Billions of blistering barnacles in a 雷鳴ing 台風!’?

…left you 冷淡な??

Too many things to について言及する. I read novels for fun, 非，不，無-fiction for work, but I hate any novel that 回転するs around the 内部の monologue of some bloke who in real life would be too stupid to have one (the Rabbit 調書をとる／予約するs of John Updike); anything 始める，決める in 中国 or on the sea; any novel by an する権利を与えるd old bloke who wants to have sex with every woman he 会合，会うs or even sees (the 作品 of Philip Roth); any novel in which a child or a woman dies violently at the 手渡す of some lunatic; anything grievously overwritten (Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things); and anything in which the characters are helpless under the アイロンをかける yoke of their omnipotent sadist author, who makes sure everything goes as 不正に for them as it かもしれない could (Thomas Hardy, Ian McEwan).?

Give me P.G. Wodehouse or Barbara Pym any day.?

• Marcus Berkmann’s 最新の 調書をとる／予約する, How To Be A Writer: Baths, 薄焼きパン／素焼陶器s And Endless Cups Of Tea, is published by Little, Brown on June 7 at £16.99.?