Gianrico Carofiglio is the author of the forthcoming Silence of the Wave, which stands alone from his bestselling series starring defense lawyer Guido Guerrieri.
On your nightstand now:
Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I had already read his previous books--Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan--and very much appreciated them. This book, and the others by Taleb, is about how our lives are influenced by randomness and how we can gain advantage from understanding this truth.
Favorite book when you were a child:
White Fang by Jack London. Because of the great adventure, because of the animals (I love animals, especially dogs), because it was the first real reading of my life. I loved all of the book.
Your top five authors:
Franz Kafka, George Simenon, John Steinbeck, Italo Calvino and Thomas Mann.
Book you've faked reading:
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. I always talk about this book as if I have read it. Nobody, until now, has unmasked me, for the simple reason that nobody (that I have met until now) has really read this book.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Stoner by John Williams. I discovered the author and the book last year. It's the story of an ordinary man and nothing special, apparently, happens. Nonetheless the book is a page turner because of the incredibly deep insight of the author.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Loneliness by John Cacioppo and William Patrick. The cover was so essential and at the same time meaningful and fortunately also the book was good....
Books that changed your life:
White Fang by Jack London, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, Il Cavaliere Inesistente (The Nonexistent Knight) by Italo Calvino, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but most importantly, A Moveable Feast by Ernst Hemingway. It was when reading this book that probably I really decided that I wanted to be a writer.
Favorite line from a book:
"All this happened, more or less." --Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, I will hardly laugh so much again in my life!