Which is the answer, Koshembos, to why the list is so odd. As far as I know, there’s no official reading list. Everybody’s free to find their own books. I tend to read whatever falls under my hand. And for some reason, I tend not to read the big blockbusters like Rushdie and Solzhenitsyn and Khaled Hosseini. I’m impressed that you can read in so many languages. I can limp along in French enough to read a little Baudelaire, but don’t ask me to read Proust (in French that is).

Neither Muldoon nor Heaney were actually born in the Republic of Ireland, although the identity politics of Northern Ireland is a messy old business and far be it from me to claim that they’re not Irish. On the other hand Yeats, Swift, Joyce and Wilde were all born in Dublin (though I suppose strictly speaking not in the modern Republic of Ireland), so it’s not hard to find alternatives. I know I’ve read some contemporary Irish writers as well, though the names aren’t springing to mind.

Milosz I read in three languages: Hebrew, English and the original Polish. The latter is unbelievable. He himself was a great man. Arabic books I want to read someday in Arabic; I can understand spoken Arabic, but that’s it. Another difficulty with Arabic is: it’s two languages standard and spoken. I understand spoken but books are written in standard Arabic.