The Fall

The Fall by Albert Camus
You enter a bar in Amsterdam. A man begins to speak to you, his strange, seductive confession suggesting that you are somehow complicit. This 1956 novel is a masterpiece. It taught me that the relationship between reader and writer could be explored explicitly on the page. I’ve practiced my craft differently ever since [Mohsin Hamid’s acclaimed new novel, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” charts the rise of a young man in today’s Pakistan. Here, the author of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” names six books that taught him how to write.]