Authors at Cork World Book fest pick their favourite books 

Joseph O’Connor, Sara Baume and others select their favourite read of all time, and a recent book that's also impressed them

Joseph O'Connor; Sara Bauma; Shane Hegarty: some of the authors appearing at Cork World Book Festival

1. Joseph O’Connor

All-time favourite book: Peter Carey’s novel Oscar and Lucinda, a book I first read several decades ago. The characterisations, the setting, the evocation of history, the beauty of the sentences – everything about it is superb. To me, Peter Carey is the Dickens of our era, except he is a better writer than Dickens because his people always seem real.