Bøger af Claire Messud

In the glittering tradition of Edith Wharton, The Emperor's Children examines life in upper-crust Manhattan, and tells a compelling story of ambition, vanity and tragedy.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state-separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family's history, Claire Messud animates her characters' rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is "a tour de force...one of those rare novels that a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters" (Yiyun Li).

'One of those rare novels which a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters . . . Claire Messud is a magnificent storyteller' Yiyun LiJune 1940. As Paris falls to the Germans, Gaston Cassar - honorable servant of France, devoted husband and father, currently posted as naval attache in Salonica - bids farewell to his beloved wife, aunt and children, placing his faith in God that they will be reunited after the war. But escaping the violence of that cataclysm is not the same as emerging unscathed. The family will never again be whole.A work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, This Strange Eventful History charts the Cassars' unfolding story as its members move between Salonica and Algeria, the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia and France - their itinerary shaped as much by a search for an elusive wholeness, as by the imperatives of politics, faith, family, industry and desire.

"Tâitulo de la ediciâon original: The woman upstairs"--Title page verso.

Told with urgency, intimacy, and piercing emotion, this New York Times bestselling novel is the riveting confession of a woman awakened, transformed, and abandoned by a desire for a world beyond her own.Nora Eldridge is a reliable, but unremarkable, friend and neighbor, always on the fringe of other people's achievements. But the arrival of the Shahid family-dashing Skandar, a Lebanese scholar, glamorous Sirena, an Italian artist, and their son, Reza-draws her into a complex and exciting new world. Nora's happiness pushes her beyond her boundaries, until Sirena's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • A Washington Post Top Ten Book of the Year • A Chicago Tribune Noteworthy Book • A Huffington Post Best Book • A Boston GlobeBest Book of the Year • A Kirkus Best Fiction Book • A Goodreads Best Book

A bestselling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way-and not-in New York City.There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite-an "It" girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist-and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray's nephew, Frederick "Bootie" Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootie's unexpected decisions-and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome-that will change each of their lives forever.A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune-of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promise-The Emperor's Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment.A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

A collection of personal and critical essays on everything from childhood to womanhood, literature to visual arts and the relationship between form and meaning in storytelling.

'A profound book about the intrication of literature and life, about the modest, miraculous ways art helps us to live' Garth GreenwellIn her fiction, Claire Messud 'has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives' (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud's own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature.In twenty-nine intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of 'a single successful sentence'.Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again 'an absolute master storyteller' (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times). 'If Claire Messud's mind was a night sky, these essays chart the stars and constellations visible there . . . illuminating, scintillating, always wise' Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical novel

A bracing and hypnotic portrait of the complexities of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of The Woman Upstairs.

A bracing, hypnotic coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor's Children.

Nora Eldridge has always been a good girl: a good daughter, colleague, friend, employee. She teaches at an elementary school where the children and the parents adore her; but her real passion is her art, which she makes alone, unseen. One day Reza Shahid appears in her classroom: eight years old, a perfect, beautiful boy. Reza's father has a fellowship at Harvard and his mother is a glamorous and successful installation artist. Nora is admitted into their charmed circle, and everything is transformed. Or so she believes. Liberation from her old life is not quite what it seems, and she is about to suffer a betrayal more monstrous than anything she could have imagined.

The latest from the renowned painter—Marlene Dumas’s new works respond more than ever to the uncertainty and sensuality of the painting process itself. Allowing the structure of the canvases and the materiality of the paint greater freedom to inform the development of her compositions, the artist has likened the creation of these works to the act of falling in love: an unpredictable and open-ended process that is as filled with awkwardness and anxiety as it is with bliss and discovery. Myths & Mortals documents a selection of new paintings—debuted in the spring of 2018 at David Zwirner, New York—ranging from monumental nude figures to intimately scaled canvases that present details of bodily parts and facial features. Several nearly ten-foot-tall paintings focus on individual figures, including a number of male and female nudes and a seemingly solemn bride, whose expression is obscured behind a floor-length veil. Like the Greek gods and goddesses, the figures in these paintings are at once larger than life and overwhelmingly human. The smaller-scale paintings—referred to by the artist as “erotic landscapes”—present a variety of fragmentary images: eyes, lips, nipples, or lovers locked in a kiss. Evident across all of these works is the artist’s uniquely sensitive treatment of the human form and her constantly evolving experimentation with color and texture. Alongside these new paintings, Dumas presents an expansive series of thirty-two works on paper originally created for a Dutch translation of William Shakespeare’s narrative poem Venus & Adonis (1593) by Hafid Bouazza (2016). Myths & Mortals is accompanied by new scholarship on the artist by Claire Messud and a text by Dumas herself.

In this highly acclaimed novel, life isn't all Emmy and Virginia Simpson anticipated. When Emmy's marriage ends, she flees her home in Sydney to "find herself" on the island of Bali-only to become embroiled with a crew of international misfits and smugglers. Her prim and pious sister Virginia, meanwhile, has never wandered far outside of London. Struggling to find meaning, Virginia follows her aging mother's advice to vacation on the Isle of Skye. On these two islands halfway around the world, the middle-aged sisters confront the costs of self-knowledge and their destinies with unexpected consequences.