With my last book, I've gone back to narrative. This is the best story I've read in the past few years. I came across it because I was about to play an angel in Mike Nichols's adaptation of Angels in America, and I bought everything I...

When I was 35–42-years old, my husband, Greg Wise, found me in a gloomy state, having researched an awful lot of gloomy subjects, including the catastrophes in Chile and El Salvador and the uglier aspects of our natures. He insisted I read...

This is about the 1994 massacre in Rwanda. It's the response of a profoundly civilized man to one of the largest and least talked about genocides of the last century. I've always been interested in human rights, and Keane presents very...

Woolf wrote this after receiving requests for one guinea from three charitable organizations. It's largely about education—women's education—and the fact that it really wasn't believed in. Woolf's position was that it was important, and...

My third choice, which covers my years from 14 to 21, was a tricky one. I remember where I was when I read it: in my father's study, in a big chair, with my jaw on my lap. At that stage, I was steeped in Victorian culture (I suppose my...

When I was 10 years old, my grandfather gave me the complete works of Doyle, so I grew up passionate about Sherlock Holmes. Through these books—The Valley of Fear is one of his lesser-known novels—I became hooked on narrative. And Doyle...

I've rediscovered this book because I've been reading it to my daughter. It's fantastically unpleasant, involving, as it does, the kidnapping of baby rabbits with a view to eating them. The rabbits who go to rescue the bunnies at Mr. Tod's...