Kate Mosse is the award-winning author of 14 novels, including the million copy selling Languedoc trilogy and the Burning Chambers series, and several plays and non-fiction books. She's also the co-founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – and now Non-Fiction – which has been celebrating women’s writing since 1996. Her latest book is Feminist History for Every Day of the Year, out now.
The last book that made me laugh
Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons In Chemistry is a subversive and clever novel about a woman dodging the limitations put upon her by American society in the 1950s and 1960s. Clever, wry, haunting, inspiring, it is also very, very funny.
What to read next
Generic Lessons in Chemistry: The multi-million-copy bestseller
The last book that made me cry
Pod by Laline Paull is a heartbreaking novel about the death of the oceans – plus family, sacrifice, migration and being an outsider – from the perspective of a dolphin. Devastating and important.
Pod: 'A pacy, provocative tale of survival in a fast-changing marine landscape' Daily Mail
The book that changed the way I think
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s debut novel, is a searing story about racism, prejudice, poverty and violence, seen through the eyes of a little girl learning to negotiate a world stacked against her. It opened my eyes to American history and to the pernicious and corrosive legacy of slavery and segregation.
The book that got me through a difficult time
TS Eliot’s epic Four Quartets, four poems written between 1936 and 1942. With reflections on faith, philosophy, the power of language and meditation, and the nature of history and humankind, it’s what I turned to for comfort when my father died and again after the sudden death of my mother in 2014, when I lost the ability to read anything else. Beautiful and timeless.
The book I most often give to others
When asked for advice on writing, I press On Writers And Writing by Margaret Atwood into people’s hands. Adapted from a series of lectures, it’s a rumination on the nature of writing and what it means to be a writer. Shot through with Atwood’s trademark wit and detachment, with great advice, it’s a must-read for anyone starting on their own writing journey.
Kate Mosse is appearing at the Good Housekeeping Live with Country Living Christmas market on Wednesday 12 November
