Christopher Kremmer.Author Christopher Kremmer. Photo: Michele Mossop
THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE
Neither of my parents finished school, so there were only two books I remember being in our house as a child growing up in Sydney - a richly illustrated copy of the Holy Bible and an eight-volume encyclopaedia called The Book of Knowledge, which my father bought from a travelling salesman. I was expected to memorise whole chapters from the New Testament at school, so I kicked back at home by perusing the encyclopaedia's stories and illustrations, which instilled an incurable wanderlust.
CHASING THE MONSOON
Alexander Frater
Books written by other travellers were among my first life-changers. They included Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, which is not only exciting reading but accessible enough to encourage the budding travel writer. Yet, when I started writing, my travel books had to encompass so much history, culture and politics of the places, they barely qualified as travel books at all.
WELCOME TO HARD TIMES
E.L. Doctorow
More recently working on a novel, I've rediscovered the joys of reading the American novelist E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime. His capacity to rework national myth and reinterpret historical periods expanded my grasp of what fiction could do. His first novel, Welcome to Hard Times, has one of the most compelling openings I've ever read and his mastery of the American vernacular taught me the importance of using Aussie period slang in The Chase.
GRAND DAYS
Frank Moorhouse
Australian novelist Frank Moorhouse's Grand Days beautifully re-creates Europe in the hopeful years after the end of World War I, and his portrait of a woman in that book made me dare to write parts of my novel from a woman's point of view - how successfully is for women readers to judge.
THE RAMAYANA and THE BHAGAVAD GITA
The books that have changed me the most are two great Indian epics. The Ramayana is the story of Rama, a royal heir exiled by his scheming relatives. When his partner, Sita, is kidnapped, he turns a setback into an opportunity by travelling India in search of her and discovers in the process the glories of his people and nation. The story imbues the old concepts of honour and nobility with a new and moving significance. As for The Bhagavad Gita, the reluctant warrior Arjuna is one of literature's most sublime creations, who learns that every action has consequences and that we should work purely for the joy of the work, with little or no concern for the fruits of our endeavours.
Christopher Kremmer is a Sydney journalist and author. His debut novel, The Chase, about the underbelly of the horse-racing industry during the 1940s, is published by Pan Macmillan, $32.99.