Five Books

What is psychological horror, as a genre? I understand it as a type of horror where the instability or threat is in the mind of the person perceiving it as well as in the world they inhabit. So rather than the monster being outside us, a creature lurking in the trees outside the light cast by the bonfire, the monster is sitting around the fire with us, or maybe it’s in our mind. Or maybe, in reality, we’re the monster.

Fiction in translations will broaden your reading horizons. Much of the most exciting, playful and inventive new fiction can be read in translation. farsighted publishers are producing more and more translated fiction. "A good translation makes it possible for you to enter these worlds without any profound cultural knowledge of the places that you’re going to, though you might acquire it as you go." Our experts have picked the best.

To start us off, would you reflect on the coming-of-age novel: what it is, and why you might be attracted to the form? Yes. It’s an electrifying time, isn’t it? And a shared experience we all have. I think the meat and bones of great writing and great novels can be contained in that experience between your childhood and teenage years. For me, it’s a more attractive period to write about than many of the subjects we look at in adulthood.

In our stressful world, why are we drawn to reading dystopias? I think the appeal of dystopia is twofold. Firstly, as a reader and a writer, it’s very narratively fertile. In a dystopia, it is very clear what is wrong, which can go a variety of ways; and it is frequently a human-created wrong. So it gives you lots of fun friction points.

I love this theme, ‘body horror.’ What does it mean to you, and what makes for a good body horror book? For me, body horror is fiction about the violation of, or transformation of, the human body – at the hands of ourselves, another, or an entity, such as the state or technology.

I know from your book that there are cave paintings in Egypt that could be as early as 6000 BC. What time period are we looking at when we talk about Egyptian mythology? And is there a consistent mythos over all that time? In my books, I focus on the Pharaonic period, a period of about 3000 years: very roughly 3000 BC to a few centuries before zero, when Alexander the Great arrives. Then it becomes the Greek Ptolemaic phase, then the Roman phase — but there are still overlaps.

You are a scientist and conservationist of many years, and now also the author of a new book on snow leopards, which draws from your 20 years of study in some of the world’s most remote regions. What do you think a good book about ecology should do? I think a good book about ecology should make the reader curious about nature and arouse a desire in them to step outside and connect with nature in whichever way they can.

Best books on Biology recommended by eminent academics, science writers and other experts. Everything from microbes to dinosaurs, from plants to people.

In 1974, I invested in what I was assured was a wonderful opportunity, an exciting Canadian venture called Aquablast, presented to me by a vice president at the Bank of Boston. It turned out to be a catastrophe for all of us who invested in it. I lost my home, I stood down from Parliament, and my wife Mary took a teaching post in Cambridge so we could keep a roof over our heads. There are few sensations quite like realising you have been taken in. Your first reaction is disbelief.

Thank you for recommending these five books on wilderness. Perhaps you could start us off by talking about what defines a wilderness. Well, it’s a surprisingly fraught question.