The latest intellectual maverick to win the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, Laurent Binet certainly isn’t shy, especially when it comes to his literary tastes. A single paragraph in his debut — a postmodern take on Heinrich Himmler’s righthand man Reinhard Heydrich — reveals his position on Camus, Desnos, Flaubert, Hasek, Kafka, Marquez, Rimbaud and Hemingway among others. Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones is summarily dismissed as ‘Houellebecq does Nazism’. Binet’s next book, an account of Francois Hollande’s presidential campaign, is unlikely to be quite as provocative. He lets us know what’s on his book shelf.
He tweets @laurentbinetH
1) What are you reading at the moment?
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
The wonderful sex scene in Eye of the Needle by Ken Follet.
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
Antigone by Jean Anouilh
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
Les Essais de Montaigne, Les Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe de Chateaubriand and Churchill’s war memoirs
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
Flaubert’s Salammbô
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
‘How to live only once’
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
Any play of Edward Bond
Poems of Jim Morrison
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
The one in Traumanovelle by Arthur Schnitzler (well, I can’t remember if it does look like that in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, actually…)
9) What would you title your memoirs?
‘Nothing ever goes according to plan’
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
James Bond.
11) What book would you give to a lover?
Freedom or Love by Robert Desnos
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
The Bible. Just kidding. But still.
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