| 1 | Best short story I’ve ever read My favourites are by Edgar Allen Poe, Sait Faik, O’Henry, Kafka, Bukowsky, Nadine Gordimer and Tomris Uyar. |
| 2 | Book that should be on the national curriculum Nazim Hikmet’s poetry should be on the Turkish and international curriculum. |
| 3 | Best ‘film of the book’ Hal Asby’s ‘Being There’ with Peter Sellers (adapted from the novel by Jerzy Kosinsky). |
| 4 | Book I’d blush to be seen reading on a bus Any of my own. |
| 5 | This may not be literary as such, but here are my favourite jazz singers Diana Kroll, Ray Charles.
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| 6 | The book I’d most like to reread, if I could find it again I reread Herman Hesse’s Steppenwoolf every two years, yet Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, and the poetry of Attila Ilhan, Nazim Hikmet and Metin Altiok are always to hand to reread, especially when I need strength to keep writing. |
| 7 | Favourite novel no one else seems to have heard of Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary.
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| 8 | My favourite bookshop My favourite bookshops must include coffee-shop inside; then I can smell 2 of my favourites together: coffee and books. Barnes and Nobles in New York City, FNACs in Paris and Barcelona, Remzi Bookstores in Istanbul, Foyles and Borders in London. |
| 9 | Author I’d like to nominate for the Nobel Prize for literature Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and novelist Orhan Pamuk, and Margaret Atwood.
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| 10 | Deceased author I’d like to meet for a drink French author Romain Gary (who used the pseudonym Emile Ajar in his last novels). I might even flirt with him, since I admired both his literature and himself, and dedicated one of my novels to him. |
