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You can see my novel THE KILLING OF FAT BOY KOEN on Amazon Kindle here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-Fat-Koen-ebook/dp/B0085A7WP8/

Rather than bore you with lots of trivial personal details, here’s my list of ‘must read’ books for anyone living in the twenty first century. It should tell you more about me than any tedious biographical stuff.

So, before you pick up anything else, read these first!

Any of John Updike’s 'Rabbit' series. Set in small town America in the second half of the last century, these engrossing novels reflect the universal stress, tensions and challenges faced by almost everyone bringing up a family.

'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria Remarque is where all modern war novels start. It contains not a jot of romanticism.

'From Here to Eternity' by James Jones tackles many contemporary issues long before it was fashionable to do so.

'The Naked and the Dead' is Norman Mailer’s first and by far his finest novel.

Read almost anything by Richard Ford, but especially 'Independence Day' (which is decidedly NOT about spaceships and Martians – that’s another ‘Independence Day’). Also his latest, 'The Lay of the Land'.

John Steinbeck’s 'Grapes of Wrath' is a stunning example of an author delivering the knockout punch on the last page.

A short, dense and powerful book that says everything there is to say about contemporary South Africa is 'Disgrace' by J M Coetzee.

'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry is a fine and colourful evocation of the tragedy of cast in India.

Especially for Australians, and very avant-garde in its day, there’s 'The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith', but not much else, by Thomas Keneally.

Harper Lee needed to write nothing more than ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to have her name added to the list of literary greats – but I find it a bit dated these days.

‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote blazed the trail for an endless series of non-fiction novelists.

'Sophie's Choice' by William Styron is a great novel about the dark days in Germany and America.

'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy has had a deservedly outstanding reception, but ‘Blood Meridian’ is a more exciting, gritty, and uncompromising novel set in the mid nineteenth century. A bloody expedition is set in train by a band of unscrupulous southern US whites who ride into Mexico to kill Native Americans for profit. A blood chilling page-turner.

You may have noticed that there are no English authors in the above list, (by which I mean not the language obviously, but writers from England, the United Kingdom, or even the British Isles). Does anyone there write good books any more?

Please respond to this deliberate provocation by sending me an email with your ideas.