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A book that changed me

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  This mountaineering yarn from 60 years ago still makes me laugh out loud. How?

  Tim Key

  I discovered WE Bowman’s The Ascent of Rum Doodle in my twenties. And I’ve been rediscovering it ever since, says poet and stand-up Tim Key
  

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  I learned what it was to love and leave a place after reading Raymond Williams

  Lynsey Hanley

  The Welsh critic’s 1960 novel Border Country is an intimate history of a working-class family, says Lynsey Hanley, the author of Respectable: Crossing the Class Divide

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  Angela Carter's exploration of life in a female body taught me to be comfortable in my own

  Evie Wyld

  I was 15 and in the bottom set for most subjects at school. The Magic Toyshop changed everything, says author Evie Wyld

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  As a 20-year-old student I didn't laugh very much. Then I read Tristram Shandy

  Liam Williams

  I was a rookie standup when I came across Laurence Sterne’s classic, and it changed my view of not just comedy, but life, says comedian and writer Liam Williams

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  I thought I was too different to see myself in a novel – but Sayaka Murata got me

  Naoise Dolan

  The heroine of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman gave me confidence in myself as an autistic writer, says Naoise Dolan

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  How a badly behaved heroine transformed my grey little life

  Sophie Mackintosh

  Alan Warner’s Morvern Callar taught me about rooting for the wicked, giving up control and the beauty in ambiguity, says author Sophie Mackintosh

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  How Steinbeck's Cannery Row spoke to me – even in small-town Indonesia

  Eka Kurniawan

  The 1945 novel released to me the secrets of authorship in my own language, says the writer Eka Kurniawan

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  I thought my writing too shameful, too feminine, until I read Karl Ove Knausgård

  Megan Nolan

  The emotional power of his six-part epic My Struggle gave me permission to write to my strengths, says the writer Megan Nolan

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  I can never look at an alsatian without thinking of Martin Amis's London Fields

  Rosa Lyster

  When my dad introduced me to the novel, he didn’t say what it was about, says the writer Rosa Lyster

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  My mind and body were not my own until I read The Fruits of the Earth

  Kamel Daoud

  The 1970s Algeria I grew up in was religious and austere. André Gide’s hymn to the human body liberated me from that, says Algerian writer Kamel Daoud

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  How a book by Gertrude Stein taught me to write about myself

  Deborah Levy

  The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas investigates the art and artifice of the genre – and transformed how I thought about it, says the author Deborah Levy

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  A book that changed me: the elusive perfection of For the Time Being

  Mark O’Connell

  Annie Dillard’s 1975 book taught me, a non-believer, that religion can access deeper truths, says the Dublin-based writer Mark O’Connell

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  An education from Alan Watkins, the master columnist of Fleet Street

  Peter Oborne

  The political writer’s A Short Walk Down Fleet Street vividly describes the characters and culture of a golden age in newspaper publishing

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  I embraced Henry James’s fight against complacency

  Colm Tóibín

  The complexities of The Ambassadors made me see that there’s no need to settle for anything small

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  The Wimbledon Poisoner taught me the exoticism of suburbia

  Catherine Shoard

  Nigel Williams’s comedy is piss-take and celebration: it gave me some insight into why people might have liked a civilisation defined by Margaret Thatcher

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  The rabbit language of Watership Down helped me make the leap into English

  Philip Oltermann

  As a German-speaking teenager, reading Richard Adams’ book gave me confidence – and I learned about how language works

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  Prince Cinders, the spotty hero who made me hang up my tiara

  Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

  Babette Cole’s deliciously irreverent tale subverted the Cinderella story – and set me on the path to feminism

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  Help me trace the book that prompted my political awakening

  George Monbiot

  George Monbiot: In a dusty box in the school sanatorium I found a book that had escaped the censorship of the headmaster. But what was its title?

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  Malcolm X’s autobiography didn’t change me, it saved me

  Lemn Sissay

  Aged 17, I felt like an outsider. This book opened the door to reading – and to discovering my identity

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  Half of a Yellow Sun shocked me into a sense of my own expatriate identity

  Claire Armitstead

  At last I had found a novel that challenged the stories I had been told, growing up as an insider-outsider in Nigeria