Great Aussie authors on their top books ahead of Writers Week

We chat to Graeme Simsion, Morris Gleitzman and Julie Koh about their literary must-haves 

If you had to live alone on a desert island with one book, which book would it be? Ahead of this year's Australian Writers Week, we spoke to authors Morris Gleitzman, Graeme Simsion and Julie Koh about their favourite Australian novels, literary heroes and desert island books.

Graeme Simsion

Author of The Rosie Project, The Rosie Effect, The Best of Adam Sharp, Two Steps Forward

Favourite Australian book

The Rosie Project changed my life... but I guess you’d rather I looked a little wider. I really find the 'favourite' thing hard. I tend not to re-read books and my taste has changed so much over time, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of books that spoke to me at a younger age that I might no longer enjoy. I liked Tim Winton’s Dirt Music and gave it as a gift to overseas friends... but I feel uncomfortable bestowing ‘favourite Australian Book’ on it – sorry!

Desert island book

There’s a practical part of me that would choose a manual on desert-island survival, but the novelist in me thinks this could be a good time to tackle something substantial, like the Complete Works of Shakespeare. And then that practical side says 'Why not something in another language, which you'd inevitably master as you read?' I speak some French, so maybe Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I got through the first volume, a long time ago, but not so long ago that I’ve forgotten the experience. Shakespeare.

Literary heroes

Well, I can call him a literary hero since he’s won the Nobel Prize for Literature now. Bob Dylan has long been a hero of mine, providing a model of a creative life with peaks, troughs, introspection and reinvention. My writing heroes have changed over a lifetime of reading, but I’ve always admired those who can tell a compelling story while examining profound issues. When I was 15, Albert Camus was the first of these – I've not re-read him. If you're going to have heroes it’s sometimes wise not to look too closely.

See him this week 

 Romantic Fiction and Algorithms of Love. These days, young people in China and Australia may face similar challenges in finding the one, but may have their own tricks for resolving that challenge. Hear Graeme Simsion in conversation with Chinese writers.

 7pm. Fri 22 Mar. One Way Street Bookstore, Joy City. Free (registration required). 

 A Tech Guy's Approach to Love. The 'tech guy' is a special personality type: often highly intelligent, and logical, but sometimes lacking in charm and personability. Graeme Simsion discusses the image of the 'tech guy': His characteristic oddities, his chances of finding romance, and what can be done to get him out of his rut.

 3pm. Sat 23 Mar. Yan Ji You Book Store, Wangfujing. Free (registration required). 

Morris Gleitzman

Author of Two Weeks with the Queen, Grace, Doubting Thomas, Bumface

Favourite Australian book

Currently, my favourite Australian book is Home by Ben Quilty and Richard Flanagan. This remarkable artist and this equally remarkable writer travelled together to Syria and put together a compendium of drawings by Syrian children living with war. Fitting that I ended that last sentence with a tautology, because even for those of us who love words and are grateful for all they give us, it’s useful to be reminded that words are only human and sometimes should take a back seat. What better book to give us that reminder than this soul-wrenching collection of simple graphic truths about the most important things. 

Desert island book

My desert island book is The Oxford English Dictionary (1989, 20 vols). It’s one of those titles you keep meaning to read, but in the hurly-burly of daily domestic life, you just don’t seem to get around to it. I want to read it before I die, but can’t see it happening until I find myself stranded somewhere without Netflix. 

Literary heroes

My literary heroes are the parents and other family members who know that each child only needs one sublime reading experience to become lifelong literary adventurers. Finding that first magic book can take a lot of time and a lot of discarded volumes and play havoc with domestic schedules, but what a result.

See him this week 

 The Child’s Eye: Morris Gleitzman in Conversation with Zhou Rui. Writing from the child’s point of view is a fertile fictional approach. The most complex geopolitical situations can be drawn in the simplest of lines, while the most straightforward personal relations are lent complexity and nuance that rival the great dramas of the stage. Gleitzman and Rui discuss their experiences seeing from a child’s eye, and the ways in which this vantage point has afforded them unique approaches to storytelling.

 2pm. Sat 23 Mar. AIOSPACE, 798 Art District. Free (registration required). 

Julie Koh

Author of Capital Misfits and Portable Curiosities 

Favourite Australian book

Tom Cho’s Look Who's Morphing is my favourite Australian book. It’s a wild and fantastic short-story collection that showed me new possibilities for Australian fiction. 

Desert island book

The book I would take to a desert island is Bear Grylls' How to Stay Alive: The Ultimate Survival Guide for Any Situation. I haven’t read it but I’m in dire need of survival skills – natural selection should really have taken me long ago. 

Literary heroes

I don’t idolise authors anymore but some of the writers who have influenced my work are Jonathan Swift, Haruki Murakami, Roald Dahl and Roberto Bolano.

See her this week 

 Alchemical Imagination. Julie Koh’s dreamlike narratives swell with undercurrents of social critique. Li Jingrui, a former journalist, moulds her stories around the edges of true stories and personal histories. Joining them in conversation, Nüvoices’ Alice Xin Liu discusses the ratio of critique to imagination: how authors use narrative and voice to imbue social commentary with authorial creativity and transform the public into something personal.

 8pm. Fri 22 Mar. The Bookworm, Sanlitun. 60RMB. Buy your tickets here.

 The Pleasure of the Unknown. Julie Koh and Zhu Yue ride the edges of realism in their fiction: stepping back from the day-to-day, they employ the surreal or near-real as a way of re-assessing our relationships with ourselves and society. They discuss their own feelings about surrealism: is there pleasure in leaving the known world behind? Or does the anxiety of life pervade everything, even fiction?

 3pm. Sun 24 Mar. One Way Street Bookstore, Joy City. Free (registration required). 

For links to register or book for all these events, extract the QR code below. 

To find out more about all the events happening this Australian Writers Week, hit 'Read more' below. 

You might have missed

More from Time Out Beijing

Stay up to date in Beijing