The novelist, whose book “Normal People” is new in paperback, used to resist long sentences: “I found Henry James almost unreadable five or six years ago, and now I love him! Who knows what I might get into next?”

What books are on your nightstand?

I’ve been traveling over the last few weeks so my reading has been even more disorganized than usual. Last week I finished Natalia Ginzburg’s very beautiful novel “Family Lexicon,” translated by Jenny McPhee. Right now, I’m reading and enjoying a few different books at once: Dostoyevsky’s “The Karamazov Brothers,” in a translation by Ignat Avsey; Zadie Smith’s collection “Grand Union”; and Andrés Barba’s forthcoming novel “A Luminous Republic,” translated by Lisa Dillman.

What’s the last great book you read?

Other than the above mentioned, I finally finished “Anna Karenina” recently, in a translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I think I can say without controversy that it’s a great book.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

Yes! And not only “Anna Karenina.” I read Henry James’s “Washington Square” for the first time a couple of weeks before that, and last summer I read Proust’s “The Guermantes Way” in the Moncrieff and Kilmartin translation. There are a lot of classic novels out there, and I’m trying my best to read as many as I can. But I’m also aware that most of my reading until now has been limited to the literary traditions of Europe and North America. I just wish I had time to read everything.