Fay Weldon's 6 favorite books

Fay Weldon is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who, at the age of 16, lived in a grand London townhouse as the daughter of the housekeeper. In addition to winning a Writers' Guild Award for the pilot of Upstairs Downstairs, she is a Commander of the British Empire whose books include Praxis, shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction; The Heart of the Country, winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize; Worst Fears, shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award; and Wicked Women, which won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.

One of her six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Siege by Ismail Kadare

First published in Albania in 1970, The Siege is now available in a truly literary English translation by David Bellos. Kadare, a frequent Nobel Prize contender, gives a lively and sophisticated view of the practicalities, absurdities, and inevitabilities of warfare from the point of view of a medieval quartermaster.

Read about another book on Weldon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue