The Booker-winning author on the the joys of Flann O’Brien, the magic of EL Doctorow, and having doubts about Richard Dawkins

My earliest reading memory
My mother taught me how to read. I was happy enough in school but at some point she must have realised that I wasn’t learning anything; I think I was seven. So my earliest memory of reading is sitting with my mother at the kitchen table, looking at a comic called Sparky. Her finger was under a word in one of the speech bubbles, and I recognised it, and the next one, and the next. I was up and running. By the end of the next day, I’d finished Nietzsche and had moved on to Dostoevsky.

My favourite book growing up
When I was 10 or 11 I probably knew Richmal Crompton’s Just William off by heart. There were two things about the book that I loved, and still do: William always got away with it, and the adults were idiots.