The Books That Made Me

I often describe my novel Fundamentally as Evelyn Waugh meets Phoebe Waller-Bridge, so I’ve been inspired by a pretty wide range of cultural production! I’ve always loved old-school British satire, like Evelyn Waugh’s hilarious novel Scoop about an accidental war journalist, Kingsley Amis’ comic academia novel Lucky Jim, and every word ever written by Oscar Wilde. I adore the wry cynicism, the nose for the absurd, and the ability to undermine an entire institution with a well-timed observation or a devastating bit of side-eye.

For contemporary political satire, I’m drawn to American writers like Paul Beatty and Percival Everett. Beatty’s The Sellout and Everett’s The Trees are astonishing in how they use daring humour to mount searing socio-political critiques. I love reading a joke and feeling my eyes widen with shock before laughing out loud. I have so much respect for writers who can use humour both to entertain the reader and to skewer the political status quo – it’s what I am trying to do in my own work!

Male satirical writers sometimes miss the emotional, relational and bodily truths of the human experience, but there are so many phenomenal female writers who I turn to for inspiration. Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is an intimately observed riot of the senses, stuffed with food and lesbian sex and large female bodies, as well as being a smart dissection of mothers and religion and eating disorders. The intoxicating intimacy and abjection in Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperation is a best-in-class exploration of the desire to find sublimation in relationships, and Amy Key’s nonfiction book Arrangements in Blue is a stunningly honest and emotionally wrenching study of the joys and disappointments of a life lived alone.

I love novels that find delight in absurdity, and two of my favourites are Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin. Both stories chart young women journeying through various forms of mental breakdown, but they find hilarity amidst the nonsensical choices made by women who have fallen off the edge, and with a light touch, offer sharp insights into contemporary life.

Writing about an embattled minority community, as I do, is a fraught experience – and Torrey Peters’ DeTransition, Baby has been a guiding light for me. It’s an unflinching and utterly honest exploration of the trans experience that leaves no stone unturned. Peters’ taught me there’s nothing to be gained by sanitising a minority group, that readers can only connect with real, flawed, vulnerable characters – it’s in that mess where empathy is born.

Striking the right balance between humour and emotion can be tremendously difficult, but Catherine Newman is the absolute master. We All Want Impossible Things follows a woman caring for her best friend at the end of life, but anguish, grief, joy, humour, and celebration are all jumbled together in a perfect reflection of life as it really is. I found myself snorting with laughter even as tears streamed from my eyes, a sensation I long to replicate in my own work.

Nussaibah Younis, Author of Fundamentally
Fiction Book of the Month for March