My earliest reading memory
Pünktchen and Anton by Erich Kästner. I was seven, and during a long ride in a packed car, my mum placed me on someone’s lap in the front. I ate chocolate while reading. The chocolate melted while I was lost in the book and spoiled the strange man’s suit – and, unfortunately, some pages of the book, too.
My favourite book growing up
All the fairytales I could get. Grimms’ in the first place. But also One Thousand and One Nights, and others from all over the world: Persian, Hungarian, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese. They were funny, unsettling and mysterious all at once.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Indian Summer by Adalbert Stifter. His language is so beautifully slow, and he speaks with so much passion about art and the human mind.
The writer who changed my mind
Edgar Lee Masters’ The Spoon River Anthology. Walking over a cemetery, the narrator is listening to the whispering of the dead revealing the true stories of their lives. I read it for the first time in my mid-20s, and I often reread it.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem To the Sun. The beauty of the sun is described by someone who lost her sight. It was in my suitcase when I travelled to Tuscany as a student during my holiday, taking my little blue typewriter with me for the first time.
The book I came back to
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne was given to me by my father when I was about 12 or 13. Perhaps a bit too early. But I enjoyed it so much when rereading it recently. His detours, that turn out to be what we call life, are as deeply amusing as they are deeply wise. And the book is an example of the joy of free writing, instead of being a slave to a plot.
The book I reread
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. My first encounter was when I translated the first chapter in school, when I was 16. I’ve often come back to it since. It’s about the mystery of transformation, something that all creatures have in common. Every state of being contains a story of motion waiting to be told.
The book I could never read again
Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund. There’s a certain time in life when one needs to read Hesse, and there’s another time when you’re far from it.
The book I discovered later in life
Poetry by Christine Lavant. Born as the ninth child to a poor miner’s family in southern Austria, making her living by knitting, she became one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and is, unbelievably, still widely unknown.
The book I am currently reading
Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee.
My comfort read
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas. A profound as well as funny lecture about how a story can be told without being told.
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann, is published by Granta. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
