Katherine Rundell, 38, has always been an independent spirit. She spent much of her childhood in Zimbabwe, before taking her undergraduate degree at Oxford. Later she was accepted as a fellow in English literature at All Souls College, having impressed the sitting fellows after a three-hour exam on the theme of novelty (she wrote about \u201cDerridean deconstructionist theory and Christmas crackers\u201d). <\/p>\n
Rundell wrote five adventure novels for children before her first big non-fiction book, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne<\/a>, won the Baillie Gifford prize in 2022. She split the \u00a350,000 prize evenly between an ocean-based conservation charity and supporting refugees. Then came Impossible Creatures<\/a>, her fantasy novel for children. It won the British Book Awards children\u2019s fiction book of the year and gained her comparisons to Philip Pullman and JK Rowling. The sequel, The Poisoned King, is out now.<\/p>\n \u2022 Katherine Rundell, a brilliant children\u2019s fantasy writer to rival JK Rowling<\/a><\/p>\n What is your favourite book by a dead author?<\/p>\n It feels very predictable to love Hamlet \u2014 like loving gold bullion or champagne or the ocean \u2014 but it\u2019s the written text I adore most. I encountered it as a child and it felt like feasting on fury and drama and passion. Later I studied it for A-level; I still have my text, annotated with insightful notes like: \u201cThis is metaphor about death?\u201d When I taught it at university it was often the play that produced the most wit and brilliance from my students; they rose to meet it. My most recent children\u2019s book, The Poisoned King, is very loosely based on it \u2014 the story of a princess whose uncle Claude has killed the king, and who must dissemble on her road to revenge \u2014 albeit with more talking dragons. I don\u2019t plan to tell children lest it put them off, but I hope years later they might read Hamlet and take pleasure in the bright flash of connection.<\/p>\n \u2022 What we\u2019re reading this week \u2014 by the Times books team<\/a><\/p>\n What is your favourite book by a living author?<\/p>\n If a book can be perfect, I think Gilead<\/a> by Marilynne Robinson is perfect. It\u2019s a book of such intelligent, warm generosity, a story laid out by an elderly pastor, John Ames, for his beloved young son. Set in a small fictional town in Iowa in 1956, it feels at once as quiet as breathing and outstandingly ambitious. It\u2019s about the reconciliation of faith and failure, about the grace and gallantry we can offer each other and our faltering, limping steps onwards. There are other wonderful books in the cycle \u2014 Lila and Home \u2014 but Gilead is my favourite.<\/p>\n