(English below.) Several people remembered Hill's delight in Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, William Blake and Leo Tolstoy. They named classics like The Great Gatsby, War and Peace or À la recherche du temps perdu, which we have not included here.
Lord Berners' autobiography First Childhood, which was published in 1934, was cited by two of Hill's close friends. British aristocrat Lord Berners had an eccentric way of life, dying the doves on his estate bright colours and once inviting his favourite horse to a tea party. In this book he describes his Victorian upbringing and youth at boarding school with wit and perception, openly declaring his homosexuality in a manner unusual for his times.
Kablouna, 1942, by Gontran de Poncins may have particularly interested Hill in light of the interplay of word and image in book form. Early editions of the French author's travel journal contain his own illustrations and 32 photographs which are said to show the everyday life of Netsilik Inuit in Northern Canada.
Selected by... Pati Hill
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (1899)
Charles G. D. Roberts, The Kindred of the Wild (1902 )
William Faulkner, Light in August (1932)
Lord Berners, First Childhood (1934)
Gontran de Poncins, Kabloona (1941)
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (1946)
Edward T. Hall, La Dimension cachée (1966)
Mahoko Yoshimoto, Kitchen (1988)
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (1995)
