On Authors

In nearly twenty years, Robert McCrum has interviewed literature’s most influential subjects. His intimate conversations, peppered with humour, have shed new light on great authors, uncovered secrets, explored where their books have come from and how their oeuvre fits their lives.


In On Authors, McCrum reflects on the experience of interviewing these literary giants and collects together the very best Observer interviews. Unique and brilliant in their own right, gathered together they are an absorbing tour through the world of books.


The collected interviews feature: Gore Vidal; Margaret Atwood; Norman Mailer; Lorrie Moore; Don DeLillo; Philip Roth; Lynne Truss; V.S. Naipaul; Sarah Waters; and Seamus Heaney.


On Authors is the companion volume to Robert McCrum On Writing and On Reading.