The 2009 Nobel laureate and author of the recently translated “The Fox Was Ever the Hunter” had no books of fairy tales as a child: “The only ‘fantastic’ stories came from religion class.”

What books are on your night stand now?

David Grossman’s “A Horse Walks Into a Bar” — an anguish-ridden self-portrait of a standup comedian in Israel. Even if the surface cleverness seems somewhat at odds given the deep biographical despair, the book has won me over. But I still haven’t finished it. The other is Peter Esterhazy’s new book, “Simple Story Comma One Hundred Pages — The Mark Version.” Unfortunately I can’t say much about that one yet. A family in Hungary after 1945 are declared to be “enemies of the state” and are banished from the city to a village where they have to live in a single room. A young boy, the narrator, pretends to be mute. And then there’s Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt’s book about Kafka: “The Person You’re Looking for Is Living Right Next Door: Reading Kafka.”

What’s the last great book you read?

Liao Yiwu, “For a Song and a Hundred Songs.” In 1989 Liao Yiwu wrote the poem “Massacre” in response to the Chinese Army’s massacre of protesters at Tiananmen Square. For that he was sent to prison, where he spent four years in a cell with inmates who had been condemned to death; he often wrote out their last wills. He was tortured like all the other prisoners. In describing this and much more, the book shows the ruthlessness and brutality of the Chinese dictatorship. It has all the exactitude of documentary prose, but the language is so poetic I was left speechless.

Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?