Trilby Kent writes novels for adults and children. Her most recent is Stones for my Father, about a girl's struggle for survival in the Anglo-Boer War.

Trilby Kent writes novels for adults and children. Her most recent is Stones for my Father, about a girl's struggle for survival in the Anglo-Boer War.

I'm finishing a PhD on the post-war gothic novel, so I'm just emerging from three years' immersion in Cold War-era dystopian fiction.

It turned up some brilliant discoveries - Marlen Haushofer's The Wall, about a woman stranded on a mountain after a nuclear disaster, was a particular favourite - but it's nice to get back to reading for pleasure, not research. I recently started A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, by Gil Courtemanche: a brilliant, scathing exposé of the Rwandan genocide, brutal and darkly satirical.

 My non-fiction choice is Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, a family biography traced through an heirloom netsuke collection.