Batya Casper's Reading Interests

The Old Testament was my first great literary influence. I am still enthralled by the literary skill of Kings 1 and 2. I was brought up on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and was deeply influenced by Crime and Punishment. As a teenager, I read the 19th century English novelists and poetry, and French 17th century poetry and plays. By profession, I am a theater director, teacher and actor - my greatest love being, of course, the classical Greek playwrights, Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett and Lorca.  As an adolescent, I immersed myself in literature of the holocaust. I read everything that Ellie Wiesel wrote, and was immensely influenced by Andre Scwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just. Among my long list of current writers, I'd say I've been most influenced by Krauss' History of Love, by Meir Shalev's Four Meals, and A.B. Yehoshua's To The End of the Millenium.