The Astrid Lindgren award-winning author of startling graphic novels, including The Arrival and The Lost Thing, shares his thoughts on favourite books, authors, characters...and a joke
Yasmin Sulaiman - guardian.co.uk,
Shaun Tan was awarded the Astrid Lindgren prize for being 'a masterly visual storyteller'. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
What's your favourite children's book?
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. It's a series of black and white images of different things with strange things happening, almost as though each picture is an extract from a larger work that's been lost. It's such a great format for a picture book because it invites even the most reluctant imagination to make something out of this singular picture accompanied by a title and a fragmentary sentence.
What's your favourite adult book?
Possibly The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read it only a few years ago so I might be a bit biased that way towards recent readings. I just found it beautifully written. It's a great example of horrific subject matter written in a way that I entirely trusted what the writer was saying. I believed in every emotional turn. Even stuff that seemed weird to me, I trusted it.
What's the last book you read?
A collection of Gabriel Garcia Marquez short stories, which I think I've read before a long time ago, called Strange Pilgrims. It's about South American people travelling to Europe, often with someone dying in a strange way. I love the surrealism of the stories and the brevity of them, but it's also so entertaining and funny.
What fictional character would you most like to be?
Well, nobody from The Road! Probably Bilbo Baggins, someone who likes to stay at home but occasionally have adventures.
What character could you fall in love with?
For some reason, I keep thinking of the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout. I've read that book so long ago I don't remember much about it, but I just really liked that character.
What book should everyone should read?
I think The Road is a good example of a book everyone should read but I wouldn't recommend it to young kids. I'd say maybe Cloudstreet, a novel by an Australian writer Tim Winton. I wouldn't say it's a book everyone should read but if I was going to say something about the place where I'm from, Western Australia, that's the book I'd perhaps give people. It's kind of like an Australian magic realist story of two families growing up in a suburb of Western Australia.
Who is your favourite author alive or dead?
I don't really have favourites of anything, I find those questions tough. Perhaps the writer I've read the most of is Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer, but I wouldn't necessarily say he's a favourite. I read him because I find his work so intriguing but I don't necessarily feel I would follow this writer to the ends of the earth.
As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury and I think his stories did more to shape me as a story-teller than anybody else – even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.
Where do you most like to read?
In bed.
Where do you most like to write?
In bed.
If you were a superhero what would your superpower be?
Teleportation, it would be pretty useful. In Australia, it's a very handy thing to have.
Is there an idea by another author you wish you'd had?
There's a lot of ideas I think are great but I'm glad that the other writer had them, because they're much better at dealing with them. My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, The Book Thief. I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it. But I think that was a perfect idea waiting for someone to find it, so that's one example.
What do you do when you're struggling for ideas?
I go for a very long walk.
What do you like about the Edinburgh book festival?
The audience is really focused and enthusiastic. I like the physical set up of it as well, I like these little yurts. There's something very civilised about it, it's got a nice sense of community. Everybody feels very happy to be here, it's got a warmth to it for a big festival, which you don't always have. And it's a beautiful city, in its own way. It defines its own beauty. It's all stone and cloud and water, and a kind of delicate greyness everywhere.
What's the weirdest thing a fan has given or said to you?
It's not that weird, but a guy once presented me his leg with an area shaved on it and asked me to draw something that he could have tattooed over. He was quite a young guy so I thought this has to be a really good drawing because he's going to be stuck with it for a long time. I just remember gripping his leg really hard so it wouldn't move and drawing this little creature. And later on he sent me a jpeg of his freshly tattooed, very sore looking leg with this little creature on it.
Tell us a joke
What did the farmer say when he saw a cow on his roof? Get Down.
My wife is Finnish and someone told me a joke recently which was, How do you know when a Finnish guy is an extrovert? Because he's looking at your shoes instead of his.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. It's a series of black and white images of different things with strange things happening, almost as though each picture is an extract from a larger work that's been lost. It's such a great format for a picture book because it invites even the most reluctant imagination to make something out of this singular picture accompanied by a title and a fragmentary sentence.
What's your favourite adult book?
Possibly The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read it only a few years ago so I might be a bit biased that way towards recent readings. I just found it beautifully written. It's a great example of horrific subject matter written in a way that I entirely trusted what the writer was saying. I believed in every emotional turn. Even stuff that seemed weird to me, I trusted it.
What's the last book you read?
A collection of Gabriel Garcia Marquez short stories, which I think I've read before a long time ago, called Strange Pilgrims. It's about South American people travelling to Europe, often with someone dying in a strange way. I love the surrealism of the stories and the brevity of them, but it's also so entertaining and funny.
What fictional character would you most like to be?
Well, nobody from The Road! Probably Bilbo Baggins, someone who likes to stay at home but occasionally have adventures.
What character could you fall in love with?
For some reason, I keep thinking of the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout. I've read that book so long ago I don't remember much about it, but I just really liked that character.
What book should everyone should read?
I think The Road is a good example of a book everyone should read but I wouldn't recommend it to young kids. I'd say maybe Cloudstreet, a novel by an Australian writer Tim Winton. I wouldn't say it's a book everyone should read but if I was going to say something about the place where I'm from, Western Australia, that's the book I'd perhaps give people. It's kind of like an Australian magic realist story of two families growing up in a suburb of Western Australia.
Who is your favourite author alive or dead?
I don't really have favourites of anything, I find those questions tough. Perhaps the writer I've read the most of is Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer, but I wouldn't necessarily say he's a favourite. I read him because I find his work so intriguing but I don't necessarily feel I would follow this writer to the ends of the earth.
As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury and I think his stories did more to shape me as a story-teller than anybody else – even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.
Where do you most like to read?
In bed.
Where do you most like to write?
In bed.
If you were a superhero what would your superpower be?
Teleportation, it would be pretty useful. In Australia, it's a very handy thing to have.
Is there an idea by another author you wish you'd had?
There's a lot of ideas I think are great but I'm glad that the other writer had them, because they're much better at dealing with them. My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, The Book Thief. I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it. But I think that was a perfect idea waiting for someone to find it, so that's one example.
What do you do when you're struggling for ideas?
I go for a very long walk.
What do you like about the Edinburgh book festival?
The audience is really focused and enthusiastic. I like the physical set up of it as well, I like these little yurts. There's something very civilised about it, it's got a nice sense of community. Everybody feels very happy to be here, it's got a warmth to it for a big festival, which you don't always have. And it's a beautiful city, in its own way. It defines its own beauty. It's all stone and cloud and water, and a kind of delicate greyness everywhere.
What's the weirdest thing a fan has given or said to you?
It's not that weird, but a guy once presented me his leg with an area shaved on it and asked me to draw something that he could have tattooed over. He was quite a young guy so I thought this has to be a really good drawing because he's going to be stuck with it for a long time. I just remember gripping his leg really hard so it wouldn't move and drawing this little creature. And later on he sent me a jpeg of his freshly tattooed, very sore looking leg with this little creature on it.
Tell us a joke
What did the farmer say when he saw a cow on his roof? Get Down.
My wife is Finnish and someone told me a joke recently which was, How do you know when a Finnish guy is an extrovert? Because he's looking at your shoes instead of his.
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