S7 Ep. 32: This Strange Eventful History: Claire Messud on Blurring Family History and Fiction

fiction/non/fiction

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’

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