# Nikita Gill: ‘I read Flowers in the Attic too young. Someone should have stopped me’

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/nikita-gill-i-read-flowers-in-the-attic-too-young-someone-should-have-stopped-me/
- Published: 2026-11-06T10:00:50+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-06T11:04:22+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/nov/06/nikita-gill-i-read-flowers-in-the-attic-too-young-someone-should-have-stopped-me
- Topics: Asia, Culture, World

## Key points

- *The Palace of Illusions* inspired Gill to write.
- Arundhati Roy and Lucille Clifton shaped her literary outlook.
- Gill says she read *Flowers in the Attic* too young.

## Summary

Nikita Gill describes how books shaped her life, from childhood reading at sea to the works that influenced her poetry. The Indian-Irish poet says Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s retelling of Draupadi in *The Palace of Illusions* inspired her to become a writer.

Gill recalls returning to *One Hundred Years of Solitude* as a teenager after first trying it at 12, and names Jane Austen’s *Persuasion* as a favourite reread. She credits Arundhati Roy’s writing and advocacy, and Lucille Clifton’s collected poems, with teaching her about literary courage and brevity; she also says she read *Flowers in the Attic* too young.

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