WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FILM?

Too many to list, but for pure escapism and comic chutzpah, Chaplin's Modern Times.

AND YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK?

Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Walter Benjamin's One Way Street, or Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

NAME THE THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO DINE WITH.

Sigmund Freud, Diane Arbus, and Marguerite Duras

WHICH WORD DO YOU MOST DISLIKE, AND WHICH WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE BACK IN PUBLIC USAGE?

The frequent and oxymoronic use of 'humbled', including Kim Kardashian's public declarations. Perhaps we need to bring back the eighteenth-century 'cockalorum' for bragging talk, or 'the cock of all cocks'.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR?

Again, impossible – it changes daily: Patrick White, Tolstoy, Penelope Fitzgerald, Anne Carson, W.G. Sebald, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner.

AND YOUR FAVOURITE LITERARY HERO AND HEROINE?

The unnamed narrator of Thomas Bernhard's The Loser and Miss Hare from Riders in the Chariot.

NAME AN EARLY LITERARY IDOL OR INFLUENCE WHOM YOU NO LONGER ADMIRE – OR VICE VERSA.

I'm loyal to my former idols – they offer such vivid access to the self I was when I loved them. I once studiously avoided Dickens, and was disdainful of plot. Now I'm in awe.

WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IMPEDES YOUR WRITING?

Doubt.

HOW DO YOU REGARD PUBLISHERS?

With gratitude, admiration, and respect – particularly when they invest as much time in nuanced editing as in marketing and publicity.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STATE OF CRITICISM?

Vigorous and healthy, though I'd love to read more work that encompasses strenuous critique and genuine pleasure. I distrust the impulse to rank or champion when it shines more light on the critic than the book.

IF YOU HAD YOUR TIME OVER AGAIN, WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE A WRITER?

Yes – it has never felt like a choice, but an essential aspect of psychological survival. But if I could channel the urge into another form, I'd choose photography.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WRITERS' FESTIVALS?

The best ones focus on books, not celebrity; the most memorable sessions are frequently the quietest, when you glimpse something raw, beyond performance. So much depends on smart, knowledgeable interlocutors. My ideal festival would be a series of live Paris Review interviews.

DO YOU FEEL ARTISTS ARE VALUED IN OUR SOCIETY?

I try to remember that art can be valued by the people, even when it's censored or repressed by those in power. I was struck by how often the working people interviewed in Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl quoted Russian literature to understand their suffering. You had an extraordinary sense that art was fundamental to making sense of epic loss; that it was as essential as breathing.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

Researching the displaced persons camps where a relative ended up after World War II. During this period of limbo, amidst all the suffering, there was a baby boom and many impulsive marriages. There are some striking photos from the camps in southern Italy, of refugees on scenic beaches. They'd lost homelands, families, they felt they'd been expelled from the world. They were waiting for their new lives in a temporary paradise.