The Paris Review Interviews: Vol. 4

If you want to get acquainted with your favourite writer, you could go to a reading or a book-signing. But to reallyknow them, you should read a Paris Review interview.The TimesFrom Philip Roth's claim that a writer needs his poisons and the antidote is often a book, to Marilynne Robinson's confession that I really am incapable of discipline. I write when something makes a strong claim on me, The Paris Review has elicited revelatory thoughts from our most accomplished novelists, poets and playwrights. Why does Maya Angelou write with a Bible and a bottle of sherry at her side? What inspires Haruki Murakami's surrealist imagination? Why did Jack Kerouac embrace haiku? In the pages of The Paris Review, writers give more than simple answers, they offer uncommon candour, depth and wit in interviews that have become the gold standard of the literary Q&A. With an introduction by Salman Rushdie, The Paris Review Interviews vol. 4 brings together another rich, varied crop of literary voices, including William Styron, Orhan Pamuk, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, Paul Auster, P.G. Wodehouse and more.A bible both for readers and writers, the insider gossip for those who are truly passionate about prose. ObserverAs an insight into what the most famous writers of the last 50 years would like you to think of them, the Paris Review interviews have many charms besides their illustrious roll-call. ProspectIndispensable reading for anybody interested in how writers work and why writing continues to work. Daily Telegraph