In conversation with Laura McGrath, Assistant Professor of English at Temple University

“Among our greatest contemporary writers” (The Miami Herald), Claire Messud is the author of The Emperor’s Children, a cutting portrait of life among Manhattan’s junior intelligentsia that was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her other acclaimed and bestselling novels include When the World Was Steady, The Hunters, The Last Life, The Woman Upstairs, and The Burning Girl. A PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, the recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and the winner of the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Messud teaches writing at Harvard University. Named one of the most anticipated books of 2024 by The Guardian, Oprah Daily, and New York magazine, This Strange Eventful History follows the seven-decade arc of an itinerant French Algerian colonial family born on the wrong side of history and forced to reckon with their interpersonal and larger political legacies.

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