44 min
This Strange Eventful History: Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction fiction/non/fiction
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- News
Author Claire Messud joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about how the lines between autobiography and fiction blur, and the ways that families—real and imagined—hide their true histories. Messud’s new novel, This Strange Eventful History, out Tuesday, draws on her own family’s complex past, including their connections to French colonialism in Algeria. Messud talks about using her grandfather’s 1,500-page handwritten memoir as source material, creating a story that spans the globe, how ordinary lives intersect with history, and including a character interested in questioning, editing, translating, and transforming family tales into a story for a different audience, as writers often do. She reads from the novel.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Amanda Trout.
Claire Messud
This Strange Eventful History
The Last Life
The Woman Upstairs
The Emperor’s Children
The Burning Girl
Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write
A Dream Life
The Hunters
Others:
France in Algeria
The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter
Elias Canetti
Alice Munro
Ulysses by James Joyce
In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4, Episode 7, Claire Messud and Brendan O’Meara on Creative Nonfiction in an Era of ‘Fake News’
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Author Claire Messud joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about how the lines between autobiography and fiction blur, and the ways that families—real and imagined—hide their true histories. Messud’s new novel, This Strange Eventful History, out Tuesday, draws on her own family’s complex past, including their connections to French colonialism in Algeria. Messud talks about using her grandfather’s 1,500-page handwritten memoir as source material, creating a story that spans the globe, how ordinary lives intersect with history, and including a character interested in questioning, editing, translating, and transforming family tales into a story for a different audience, as writers often do. She reads from the novel.
To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/
This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Amanda Trout.
Claire Messud
This Strange Eventful History
The Last Life
The Woman Upstairs
The Emperor’s Children
The Burning Girl
Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write
A Dream Life
The Hunters
Others:
France in Algeria
The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter
Elias Canetti
Alice Munro
Ulysses by James Joyce
In an Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh
Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4, Episode 7, Claire Messud and Brendan O’Meara on Creative Nonfiction in an Era of ‘Fake News’
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
44 min