SHELF LIFE
Dystopian thriller author Greg Mosse outlines the five books that helped transform him into a writerr
Greg Mosse
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez ‘When I was twenty years old, I posed naked for the sculptors at Camberwell School of Art, earning the money to move to Paris – to a tiny room in a hotel in Belleville that cost about £3 per day. Staying motionless for the sculptors was boring, but I rigged up a bookstand and read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It’s a sweeping history of a family, then a town, then a village and then a country in South America. People call it magical realism, as if the plot relies on supernatural events. In reality, the author “Gabito” is the magician, not his brilliant, distinctive extraordinary characters.
‘Back in 1981, I read the book in a US translation. Later, when I became an interpreter, I read a better French version and, finally, in Colombian Spanish. This book has mapped a massive part of my life and provided my imagination with a much broader template than “mere” realism. Perhaps it contributed to granting me permission for setting my thriller, The Coming Darkness, in a speculative 2037.’