My Life in Books: I need to finish my next book so I can keep on writing
Author Rob Doyle made his debut in 2014 and his latest book 'Cameo' is out now.
Rob Doyle is from Dublin. His debut novel was published in 2014 and was later adapted for the screen.
His third book , published in 2020, was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.
His latest book , published by W&N, is out now in trade paperback.
I’m reading a great deal about Sufism at the moment so the books I’ve got on the go are by renowned scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and , a translated text by the 16th century Persian philosopher Mullā Sadrā. There’s also a , because I’m hoping to visit that country when I can.
by Roberto Bolaño. There are so many voices in this great and ecstatic novel of youth, poetry, sex, and travel; sometimes I open it at random and drink in a few pages.
A long list! Most recently, by Jon Fosse. Though his novels are wonderful.
by Geoff Dyer. It also made me cry with laughter.
, the luminous, lyrical, and cheerful Hindu text. I read it for the first time while travelling through India in my mid-20s, and then again — the same copy — 15 years later, aged 40. I understood it in a new and deeper way the second time. It leaves a glow.
by Jonathan Littell. An awe-inspiring novel about the Holocaust that disturbed me profoundly. It’s narrated by a committed and highly intelligent Nazi.
by Friedrich Nietzsche, and all his other books too. They shocked, frightened and fascinated me when I first read them in my 20s, and they convinced me that everything I’d grown up to believe needed serious re-evaluation.
by Svetlana Alexievich. This non-fiction book by the great Belarusian author brought me into the terrible realities of war — specifically, the Second World War — like no other.
My next book. I need to finish it so that I can begin the one I’ve got in mind to write after that. And so on, until eventually I keel over.
by Jorge Luis Borges. He reinvented fiction, and he’s a continuous source of inspiration who brought real magic into the world.
: I didn’t finish the novel by Malcolm Lowry, but the 1984 adaptation by John Huston is enthralling. It stars Albert Finney as a British consul in Mexico drinking himself into oblivion. Like Bolaño’s , it makes me want to visit Mexico.
In Dublin, Books Upstairs and Hodges Figgis. In Berlin, The Curious Fox which is Irish-owned, Shakespeare and Sons, and Saint George’s. And my friend Iti’s new bookshop Desirelines Books, even though it only opens this week.
Chaos, though less by choice than as an effect of my not particularly stable lifestyle. I move around a lot.
Coffee — I’ve given up alcohol so coffee is my primary vice these days.
Billy Ray Schafer, the narrator of Sam Tallent’s superb novel . He’s a stand-up comedian on tour in deepest America, attempting to outrun the wreckage of his smashed life. A ferocious and moving portrait of disgrace.
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