On Reading in Adulthood

From dead white males to now

Photograph by the author

I have written previously about the writers that formed my first literary influences. My teenaged years were during the very early days of the internet, so I had to rely on what I got at school, from the library, and as presents from my parents. My parents were very conservative so anything remotely controversial was taboo. I went through an extended fantasy phase but, luckily, books like the David Eddings series were seen as benign. D. H. Lawrence, however, contained “bad language”, so of course I was more determined to read all of his works. Germaine Greer’s books caused all sorts of consternation. It impressed upon me the notion that books could be considered dangerous, that even ideas could be dangerous.

While I read extensively throughout high school, most of my reading material was from the English literary canon, and hence was not overly diverse. As I entered adulthood and my experiences broadened, I began to read more widely. I learnt about post-colonial theory at university and started to question some of the assumptions I had about nationality, race and identity. The “dead white male” author was no longer the pinnacle of literature. Here are five authors I have discovered and loved over the last two decades.

Andrew McGahan