Books: Claire Messud

After listing four male authors, Claire Messud ("The Emperor's Children"), racked her brain for a fifth writer. "It should go to a woman," she finally decided. Here's whom she picked.

My Five Most Important Books

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. Every detail is incredibly telling and reveals a huge amount, but there's a wonderful simplicity to Tolstoy's fiction.

"The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James. It shows that moments of revelation emerge out of the murkiness that is life.

"Zeno's Conscience" by Italo Svevo. There's a terribly unreliable narrator, but in the end, something true comes out of it; we're all too busy interpreting.

"A House for Mr. Biswas" by V. S. Naipaul. It exposes people's vulnerability in a way at once funny and painful.