No surprise that a man who has memorized more than 50 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and recites them regularly to keep his mind sharp, would include a book of those sonnets on his desert island. That’s not the only book that illuminates F. Murray Abraham’s love of the classics.  There’s also Dickens, Tolstoy, and Proust–and one book without which no other books would exist: the dictionary. The veteran actor, now 83, has been slaying audiences on Broadway and on screen for over five decades, winning an Oscar for his role as Salieri in Miloš Forman’s 1984 film, Amadeus. Many roles have followed, but it was his memorable performance in the second season of Mike White’s water-cooler hit, White Lotus, that brought him a new generation of fans–assuming, that is, that they hadn’t already discovered him as the Egyptian god Khonshu in the Marvel fantasy series, Moon Knight. But while television has brought him a global following, it is theater that retains his heart. He’s been in at least 70 shows on, off, and off off Broadway, including as Roy Cohn in Angels in America; Pozzo in Mike Nichol’s production of Waiting for Godot; and playing opposite Helen Mirren in A Month in the Country. He says, “I think we tend to load these lists with titles that puff us up, because after all it’s only ten books, not much when you consider that’s what Joyce Carol Oates reads in a couple days. There are too many I’ve left off by Mailer, Oates, Bradbury, Dostoevsky, Coetzee, Sappho, etc etc. But a desert island can’t be all heavy literature; there should be some fun books too, as well as books on living in the wild; how about Robinson Crusoe, or Swiss Family Robinson?”

Below are F.Murray Abraham’s favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.