In Irish storytelling traditions, the supernatural is entwined with the natural world (including the various traumas inflicted on the land, from invasion to famine). Here are three of my favourite stories.

Marathon Man perfectly captures the 1970s Jewish experience as my father described it: a generation away from the Holocaust, but Nazis were still being brought to justice. In other words, the trauma was generational and very much had not been forgotten.

There had not been this many words sounded in our house for a long time, and it was going to take a while to clean them out.

The Ashkenazim have a long and dark history combined with living in Central and Eastern Europe. This has led to a rich folklore full of forests, doppelgangers, and questions over the complexity of a human soul.

Discovering the modernist and postmodernist scene was a game-changer for me: all those evocative images captured in as few words as possible. And often, these poets were just a little bit Queer.

Is witchcraft inherently feminist? Is the relationship even a good thing? And what does it mean nowadays to be a witch? Let’s look at the past, the present, and the personal, with reference to one of my favourite books.

Brighton Rock is intense to say the least. It may be a classic race against time thriller, but it’s also a strange, heady mix of poverty-sticken provincialism and the potential damnation of one’s eternal soul.

‘Write what you know’ is said for a reason, even if people often take it too literally. In Coldharbour, I have written what I know, even though I don’t regularly raise the Dead or have brought a house down around me with a click of my fingers.

Why is Rebecca one of my favourite books? Well, the big twist holds up every time I read it, the protagonist’s anxieties become mine, and the atmosphere at Manderley is a heady mix of claustrophobia and lushness.