Nell Zink Couldn’t Have Written a Book Had She Stayed in the U.S.

In an email interview, the author of “Mislaid” and “Avalon” celebrated Jonathan Franzen, public radio in Europe and a book that “raises blisters.” SCOTT HELLER

What books are on your night stand?

I keep a cot in the hallway just for sleeping. There’s no reading lamp. In related news, I sleep like a marmot.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

It would be some amusing literary magazine, not necessarily a new issue, on an empty train next to a winding river, with an occasional glance at the scenery.

What’s the last great book you read?

“Wie eine Träne im Ozean” (“Like a Tear in the Ocean”), by Manès Sperber. It’s a trilogy in one volume about post-Austro-Hungarian communist intellectuals trapped between Hitler and Stalin, first published in a French translation starting in 1949. It rocked my world.

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

Stef Stauffer, a Bernese schoolteacher who vacations way up in the Alps, collected oral histories from her older neighbors and put them out in 2012 as “Steile Welt” (“Steep World”). It’s a record of grinding, gratuitous deprivation — especially for women and girls — in the tradition of “Christ Stopped at Eboli”or “Land Without Bread.”

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

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