Q&A with author Naomi Alderman

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Naomi Alderman was born in 1974 and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in London. After studying PPE at Oxford, she moved to New York in 2000 with a law firm, returning to the UK in 2002 to enrol on the MA in creative writing at UEA. Her debut novel Disobedience was published in 2006, followed by The Lessons (2010) and The Liars’ Gospel (2012). She is a professor of creative writing and also writes computer games. Her fourth novel The Power this week won the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

What books are currently on your bedside table?

The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman, plus a pile of delicious reading for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, which I’m judging this year.

Who would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?

Joss Whedon. I would be embarrassing at first about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed my life — but I think I’d calm down eventually and we might have a good conversation.

Who would you choose to play you in a film about your life?

Rachel Weisz seems a very sound choice!

Where do you write best?

Libraries — currently the Warburg Institute, a library of esoterica which I feel leaching into my head as I work.

What book do you wish you’d written?

The Vintner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox. Sexy and sublime, intensely thoughtful on religion.

When were you happiest?

Right now. My childhood was full of shocks and alarums, and I had to work a long time to make a life that pleases me.

When do you feel most free?

On a train, between places, with a book, a game and a movie in front of me to watch or a window to stare out of it if I please, and no particular work that needs doing.

How do you relax?

Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And Open University courses.

What is the best piece of advice a parent gave you?

My mum told me: almost no one can make a full living just by making and selling their art; but anyone who wants can make a life in and around the art form they love.

What is your current favourite word?

Impeachment.

What book would you give your own child to introduce them to literature?

Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken and the Green Knowe series by Lucy Boston.

‘The Power’ is published by Viking