Giller Prize Spotlight: Claire Messud
September 26, 2024
Claire Messud’s novel, This Strange Eventful History, has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What inspired you to write This Strange Eventful History?
The book was inspired by the history of my father’s side of the family, French colonials in Algeria who, after they left that country in the 1950s, lived in various countries around the world.
What do you hope readers take away from This Strange Eventful History?
The novel is about three generations of a family that is buffeted, sometimes unwittingly, by historical events. Their challenges are those of many families–both specific and universal. It’s a novel about time, about the arcs of lives; I hope that in the book, readers may feel the sweep of time’s passage, the way the large and small movements of our lives are intertwined.
Where is your favourite place to write and what is your process?
I write by hand in graph paper notebooks, in black ink, ideally at a table by a window, with natural light. I used to have a specific place but we recently moved house and I’m still figuring out where I work best. I write by hand because it’s slow and gives me time to think, and when I cross things out I can still see them if I try. I type this draft into the computer in segments, which makes further revisions easier.
Is there an activity you do to help inspire writing?
I’m always reading something, and in some way reading is indispensable to my writing–it can be fiction but doesn’t have to be; it’s often histories or narrative non-fiction. I love stories, details, sentences, and when reading, I’m always learning.
What’s a book you recommend others read and why?
Wow, so hard to name a single one! For a class I’m teaching, I recently reread Ovid’s Metamorphoses after many years–and maybe I’ll suggest that. It’s glorious, thrilling and wild