Q&A with Michelle Brafman

  

Photo by Sam Kittner

 

Michelle Brafman is the author of the new novel Draw Near to Me. Her other books include the novel Swimming with Ghosts. She teaches fiction writing in the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program.  

 

Q: Why did you decide to write a stand-alone companion to your novel Swimming with Ghosts, and why did you choose to set it in 2014, two years after the first book was set?

 

A: I had the good fortune of visiting quite a few book groups for Swimming with Ghosts, and I was surprised by how many readers wanted to know what happened after the final scene of the novel. I realized that I wasn’t finished with my peeps, so I started to writing about the days, weeks, and months following Swimming with Ghosts.

 

When I arrived at 2014, I realized that enough time had passed for these characters to establish a “new normal,” the perfect moment to give them more trouble!

 

Q: The writer Melinda Henneberger said that Draw Near to Me “delivers so much more than an update on the unwise and unwell characters Brafman has made us care about. It shows how grace is a choice that can begin to heal even the deepest betrayals.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Melinda’s words touched me deeply. My characters indeed behave badly, so it’s good to know that they are still viewed sympathetically. That’s the sweet spot for a writer.

 

The novel also poses the question: what does it take to draw someone near in the very moment you have every right to push them away? It takes a whole lot of grace to even ponder that question.

 

Q: As with Swimming with Ghosts, addiction plays a big role in the story. How do you see it affecting your characters?

 

A: I’ve heard addiction referred to as a family disease, one that can ripple through generations, cropping up when the emotional waters run high.

 

In both novels, several descendants of Sebastian Norton, the alcoholic patriarch, confront a tremendous amount of upheaval, and despite years of recovery, they struggle to stay sober. If they succumb to their addiction, they stand to lose the relationships that matter to them the most.

 

Q: Do you think readers need to have read Swimming with Ghosts before reading Draw Near to Me?

 

A: I don’t. I wanted Draw Near to Me to stand on its own, so I specifically recruited beta readers and editors who had not read Swimming with Ghosts. Their feedback pointed me to spots where I was giving too little or too much back story.

 

I also carefully reread Elizabeth Strout’s Amgash gems with two friends, one a novelist and one a book reviewer, which was incredibly instructive.

 

And I’m a sucker for interconnected short stories, so I revisited some of my favorite authors who link their narratives expertly: Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Alice Mattison, Rachel Hall, and Leslie Pietryzk, to name a few.    

 

Q: What are you working on now? Will you return to these characters?

 

A: I am working on the third installation of “The Swan Dive Series,” a title that arose from the recurring image of the aforementioned alcoholic patriarch swan diving.

 

I keep circling back to Toni Morrison’s epigraph in Swimming with Ghosts, “If you could surrender to the air, you could ride it.” That’s what I want for all the people I love, real and imagined, the ability to transcend our most painful legacies. To soar.    

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I don’t think so. As always, you asked the most important questions.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Michelle Brafman. 

Q&A with Kerri Maher

  

Photo by Kate Eden Renyi Photography

 

Kerri Maher is the author of the new novel Summer of Love. Her other books include All You Have to Do Is Call. She lives in Massachusetts.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Summer of Love?  

 

A: Many threads came together at once for this book. I’d been wanting to write a road trip novel set in California, where I grew up. And I wanted to write about addiction and recovery. And I wanted to write about the craft of storytelling.  

 

But I couldn’t figure out how any of those threads wove together. I was really struggling, and I also pitched a number of other ideas without those themes to my publisher and those were getting dinged.  

 

Desperate, I finally bought a copy of Julia Cameron’s famous creativity-course-in-a-book The Artist’s Way and vowed to do all 12 weeks. I’d been avoiding this book for a long time even though so many creators I knew swore by it for improving their process and garnering new ideas, largely because I knew the foundation of Cameron’s advice is a morning journaling practice.  

 

I hated journaling. My past is littered with the beautiful journals people have thoughtfully given me for birthdays and holidays (thinking that because I’m a writer I’d fill them in no time), in which I write one page then cast aside.  

 

But this time I committed. I bought myself some cute spiral Deconstruction Notebooks and got going. To my enormous surprise, I loved Morning Pages. And within one month of doing them, they served exactly the purpose Cameron promises, which is to take out the trash in my mind and clear the way for the good stuff to arise.  

 

Lo and behold, seemingly out of nowhere, the characters of Winnie, Miranda, and Dawn walked on stage in my mind and introduced themselves.  

 

Q: The story deals with several women--how would you describe the dynamics among them?  

 

A: Fraught.  

 

This is the story of two sisters who start close in the 1960s, then grow apart. And it’s the story of one sister’s daughter who in 2015 is afraid of telling her mother the truth about herself.  

 

These women love each other deeply, but the secrets and wounds between them have made each of them debilitatingly suspicious of their own ability to show up in the relationships. 

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?  

 

A: Since I was raised in California by native Californians, a lot of the background information for this book was lived experience—I’d been hearing about San Francisco and Berkeley in the 1960s, where so much of the novel is set, my whole life. Still, I read a few books about the era to make sure I had facts and dates and even vibes correct.  

 

Most of my research had to do with California wine country. I had to learn how wine was made, and the history of winemaking in The Golden State.  

 

I was surprised-not-surprised to learn that winemaking started with the Spanish missionaries who essentially enslaved the native population to make “holy” wine. I was fascinated by the social history of how California wine emerged from such problematic origins to become the juggernaut of sophistication and “the good life” it is today.  

 

Q: The author Marjan Kamali said of the book, “Maher skillfully pairs a deep sense of place with a refreshingly honest look at addiction and the quiet power of storytelling to help us heal.” What do you think of that description?  

 

A: I’m so grateful for it, especially because I deeply admire Marjan’s writing. And I’m flattered, because that “sense of place” in California was exactly what I was going for.  

 

It’s funny, because as a reader I loathe long descriptions of places; Thomas Hardy was really tough for me to read in college. But as a writer, I’ve become known for my particularly vibrant settings, like London before the war and Paris in the 1920s, and now California in the 1960s.  

 

I’ve devoted a lot of effort to writing place without the long descriptions. I want people to feel like they are really there with my characters.  

 

As for the “honest look at addiction,” I’ve been really honored that so many early readers of the book have given me feedback saying versions of “I’ve never heard anyone talk about addiction in this way before.” I hope it will feel fresh to others as well.  

 

And storytelling as healing? All I can say is YES! Storytelling heals.

 

 Q: What are you working on now?  

 

A: I can’t tell you much, other than that it involves a magical Book of Hours and the karma of a centuries-old love story.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?  

 

A: I am so incredibly grateful for readers, and the independent booksellers who serve them. This might seem unrelated to the subject of Summer of Love, but it’s not. One of the characters in the novel is a writer who struggles to find her way, as so many of us do. I don’t like spoilers, but let’s just say readers and bookstores are key to that character’s development.  

 

And thank you for having me on your site. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Daniel Kenitz

  

 

 

Daniel Kenitz is the author of the new novel Don't Look Away. He also has written the novel The Perfect Home. He lives in Wisconsin. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Don’t Look Away, and how did you create your character Leslie?

 

A: I typically look through headlines of the day and try to ask myself the typical what-if questions. I don’t remember specifically what headline led to Don’t Look Away, but I remember wanting to focus on a retirement scenario because I’ve read so few books like that myself.

 

I also liked the juxtaposition of someone (Leslie) who felt like their life’s accomplishments were behind them, suddenly being thrust into a situation where they have to rise to the occasion in a way that will end up defining their life.

 

Q: The author Darby Kane said of the book, “In Don’t Look Away, Daniel Kenitz expertly balances compelling crime plotting with family drama for a fresh take on a serial killer thriller.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think it’s high praise from a great writer! I’m particularly pleased with “fresh take” because it does seem like a genre in which, if you’re not careful, you can easily slip into cliché.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: In the big picture sense, yes, though there were lots of helpful edits along the way.

 

So far, I’ve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction to the climax in particular—which I hope readers will agree with—and I think an advantage of writing highly specific outlines is that when the climax drops, it feels like all of the threads are clicking into place.

 

Though most of the characters all ended up where I originally planned, the way it went down changed a lot during the process.

Q: The story is set along Florida’s Gulf Coast--how important is setting to you in your writing?

 

A: Really important. Even when querying agents, I remember people constantly harping on including sharp details about unique settings. A setting is like any other detail in that it’s part of what makes a novel feel lived-in and credible.

 

I think I picked the Gulf Coast because it felt like the non-obvious choice for a novel in a beach community, and was where someone like Leslie might end up. I also liked that Leslie ended up in a place where so many people were out-of-state transplants, which ended up reflecting some of Leslie’s internal tension, even if she didn’t know it.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Trying to figure out which of my ideas for the next novel is going to be the one. I have two ideas in particular I really like, which is great in one sense, but also difficult because picking one means putting off the other.

 

I also have a new short story being published in North Dakota Quarterly some time this year that draws some influence from my domestic thriller writing experience.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’d say to stick with Don’t Look Away because, even though the plot sounds like it’ll get pretty hairy, it’s going somewhere with it.

 

One reader told me they enjoyed The Perfect Home because it wasn’t a thriller that left them with this dark feeling like there’s no hope for humanity. Even with all the bad things going on in Don’t Look Away, I think the same idea is present here. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Robert B. McCaw

  

 

 

Robert B. McCaw is the author of the new novel Traitors. He also has written the Koa Kāne series. A retired attorney, he lives in New York. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Traitors, and how did you create your character Robert Cooper?

 

A: “Robert Cooper” inspired me to write Traitors. Cooper arose from three personal objectives: the desire to write a thriller; create an unusual, if not unique, protagonist; and draw upon my experience practicing law in Washington, D.C., and New York.

 

Cooper, as a senior lawyer in the DOJ’s National Security Division, fulfilled all those goals. His close relationship with the president elevated his status, putting him at the center of events with access to extensive resources. The recent death of his wife introduced the opportunity for a romantic subplot.

 

With those elements in place, the story flowed from the international and political headlines that have captivated me over the years.

 

Q: The author David Morrell said of the book, “Combining the espionage thriller with the legal thriller, this riveting novel...reminds me of the classic Seven Days in May.” What do you think of that comparison?

 

A: First, I am honored by the comparison of Traitors to the classic by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. David Morrell was the first reviewer to recognize that Traitors belongs to a rare literary genre combining the espionage thriller with the legal thriller.

 

He also saw a thematic similarity between the novels. Both feature exemplary men as presidents and demonstrate the fragility of our democratic form of government. In Seven Days in May, the threat is from our own military. In Traitors, the threat is foreign, carried out by sleeper agents long embedded within our society.

 

Both chillingly portray potentially disastrous real-world threats: nuclear arms policy in one and a Russian invasion of Europe in the other. And in both, brave men of integrity battle against the odds when time is of the essence if our democratic society is to survive.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Newspaper headlines served as a bountiful starting point for my research for Traitors.

 

From foreign spies arrested in the US (and other NATO countries) to Russian ambitions for European conquest, from a possible Prigozhin-like coup in Russia to isolationist sentiment in the US, Traitors draws authenticity from a reordering of recent events combined with a dose of imagination.

 

There are numerous other examples: Novichok, Epstein-like characters, jailed journalists, social media disinformation, etc.

 

Some legal processes, like FISA warrants and international legal assistance treaties, required more traditional research as did ferreting out details and settings for scenes.

 

The ease with which these disparate, real-life components came together into a coherent storyline was the biggest surprise.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: Traitors is a work of fiction intended for entertainment. That said, the story exposes the frailties of our democratic form of government and the vital role played by the men and women who work around the clock to safeguard the freedoms that too many take for granted.

 

Traitors is thus a tribute to the Claytons and Coopers (and other towering figures of integrity) who, together with countless unheralded heroes, keep the flame of democracy alive in dangerous times.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am hard at work on another Cooper novel.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: One man, Starling Lawrence, the legendary editor at W.W. Norton & Company, made the publication of Traitors possible. After reading an early manuscript, before officially acquiring the book, he offered to edit the novel, marking his changes on each successive hard-copy draft with a pencil. No computers. No spell check. Just years of accomplished editorial experience.

 

Then one day, when the manuscript finally met his specifications, he said, “It’s time to take it to committee,” and he acquired the book. Only through his recognition and skillful editing did Traitors become a reality. He was one of the greats of the publishing industry, and I will miss the opportunity to work with him in the future.

 

I do, however, still hear his voice when I sit down to write: “Avoid the obvious.” “It’s often better to cut than revise.” “Use as few words as possible.”

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Robert B. McCaw. 

Q&A with James H. Lewis

  

 

 

James H. Lewis is the author of the new novel The Boy in the Mirror. His other novels include The Dead of Winter. A former journalist and public media executive, he lives in Pittsburgh. 

 

Q: You note that you were inspired to write The Boy in the Mirror after reading an article in The New York Times. Can you say more about that?

 

A: I am a voracious reader and am often lured by a headline that tweaks my interest. Such was the case with a full-page article in The New York Times on January 3, 2025, by Saskia Solomon, “Accounts of Past Lives Peer Beyond Death.”

 

It explored a program at the University of Virginia, the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS), that applies scientific rigor to the study of reincarnation. Its founder, Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist in the university’s Department of Medicine, became intrigued by the subject and devoted his career to investigating children’s memories of past lives.

 

Intrigued, I prowled the DOPS website, which led me to a book on Stevenson’s work and another by his successor. Dr. Jim B. Tucker. Both chronicled studies of children with vivid memories of people and events before their physical births. Neither reached any firm conclusions about reincarnation. They investigated and documented.

 

I had no thought of basing a novel on this. I just found it interesting. As often happens, however, I soon asked, “What if…?” As I was finishing my last novel, the germ of this story developed.

 

Q: How did you create your characters Oliver, Lauren, and Chris?

 

A: In reviewing the DOPS case studies. I was interested in the reaction of the parents of these children. Some met their child’s claimed memories with skepticism. A few felt threatened. Others accepted the stories. Their culture or religious beliefs colored their responses.

 

I tried to incorporate this range of responses in Oliver’s parents. One had to begin as a doubter but come to accept the reality of her child’s story. Since mothers often spend more time with their young I assigned that role to Lauren.

 

The other had to model those parents who resist. That became Chris, a devoted father, but one whose job gave him less time with his son. I could then develop their tension.

 

Ollie was modeled on some children in the DOPS studies and the precociousness of my own grandchildren. My grandson continues to surprise me with the arcane bits of knowledge he’s learned, some of which are new to me.

 

I incorporated that into Ollie’s personality and hoped the reader would accept that his knowledge beyond his years come have come from the older child whose memory he’d absorbed.

 

Q: Can you say more about how you researched the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Most of my research came from the literature on the subject. I follow what DOPS is working on under its current leadership and have run across other stories of child memories.

 

Avoiding a spoiler, the final chapter, which follows Ollie seven years after the events in the book, comes from what Stevenson and Tucker found in their subjects. Ollie’s journey, as he gradually recovers more memories, is also “by the book.”

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had a vague idea of the climax, but it developed as I neared the end of the first draft. The final chapter, which Campbell called “Return with the Elixir,” I added after I’d worked out the climax.

 

After completing the first draft, I added many scenes and did a major restructuring of the two story threads, bouncing from one to the other in each chapter.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve completed a short story and am working on another as I think about the next novel. Will it be another police procedural, will my newfound interest in parapsychology suggest another story along this line, or will it be something else? I’m constantly playing with ideas, and one will force itself on me.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: It probably doesn’t belong here, but my wife passed away during my work on this novel. This forced me to put it aside for a few months. When I returned to it, I saw it with new eyes and made numerous changes. It is the one positive thing that came out of this experience. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with James H. Lewis. 

Q&A with Afsheen Farhadi

  

 

 

Afsheen Farhadi is the author of the new novel False Prophet. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write False Prophet, and how did you create your characters Jal and Rita?

 

A: Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, my family would often encounter the question of where they’re from. When my mom and uncles told people they were from Guyana, others would often mistake it for Ghana.

 

To mark the difference, my family would differentiate their home country by noting it was the site of the Jonestown cult. So from an early age, Jonestown figured into my identity and the way I see the world, and in part this is where the novel began. 

 

I also think of the novel as something of a character study. Jal is seemingly well meaning, vulnerable, and sensitive. Ultimately I wanted to explore how someone like this can fall into the trap of megalomania, who, so to speak, might be tempted to drink his own Kool-Aid (Jonestown, for those who don’t know, if where that phrase comes from, because Jim Jones forced his followers to commit suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid). 

 

The version of his mother, Rita, that Jal creates is the one he thinks will become balm to his lifelong dissatisfaction with the coldness of his childhood and, in turn, create a compelling origin story.

 

Q: Did you need to do much research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I know many writers who find research to be generative, but I’m not one of them. For this novel, I did some minor research on Jonestown. Because so much of the story that Jal tells is made up, I wanted to preserve a more free-wheeling, mythologized quality to it, rather than bogging it down with details and facts. 

 

In my limited research on Jonestown, what was most surprising is how not surprising so much of it was. It’s a story we see over and over again, and which continues to play out in various ways today.

 

Jonestown, however, was the biggest and most tragic of its kind, and in that way it seems to speak to all cults and the way they ultimately fail their members, which is an understatement, of course.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The original title for the novel was The Fear of Being Human, which is the title of the story-within-the story that Jal and his ghostwriter, Kate, tell. I liked the way this emphasized the vulnerability and anxiety and pain that I isolated as often being the starting point for megalomaniacal behavior. 

 

After reading it, however, my agent, Emma Dries, suggested False Prophet, which was a phrase that appeared several times in the original manuscript. It’s surprising now, but I’m not sure I liked it immediately. It didn’t take too long, however, for me to realize it was perfect.

 

Q: What do you think the book says about truth and lies?

 

A: We all want to believe in a world that makes narrative sense to us. And I think each of us forms our own version of the world in our heads, built of some combination of truth and lies—those we actually believe and those we desperately want to believe.

 

People who, for whatever reason, are most determined to see the world a certain way will modulate that dial to the point that truth and lies carry equal weight, which can be dangerous. But of course, it’s tempting, because we all understand that life is rife with difficult and painful truths.

 

Personally, I believe it’s healthier to accept and come to terms with those truths than obscure them with pleasure-inducing lies. This is something Jal struggles with, and which the novel explores.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing an essay collection on horror movies, which is my favorite film genre and which has meant a lot to me throughout my life. 

 

I’m also working on my second novel, which is a literary sci-fi blend that explores the way our choices are some combination of collective and individual thinking, as well as the way our actions ripple across time.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: From the editorial vision to the final cover, I’m very happy with the way False Prophet turned out.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Rachel Careau

  

 

 

Rachel Careau is the translator into English of a new edition of the French writer Colette (1873-1954)'s novel The Pure and the Impure. Her other work include translations of Colette's novels Chéri and The End of Chéri. She lives in Hudson, New York.

 

Q: Why did you decide to translate Colette’s The Pure and the Impure?

 

A: Translating Colette’s novels Chéri and The End of Chéri was a revelation to me, because I had not previously read Colette in the original French. Complex yet economical, with an appearance of effortlessness, her prose struck me as very modern.

 

When I compared Colette’s texts to the existing English versions (by Roger Senhouse and Stanley Appelbaum), I was struck by the wide gulf between the original French and the translations. Her lean style, her syntax, her broad, precise vocabulary, her musicality, had all been lost; the translations were rife with omissions, embellishments, and mistranslations; and the prose felt flaccid and outdated.

 

When I finished translating those novels, I knew I wanted to translate more Colette, to put to use what I had learned about her style. She’s challenging to translate, and I felt ready to dive once again into the challenge.

 

I asked several Colette scholars which of her books were most in need of retranslation, and The Pure and the Impure made everyone’s list. It’s an important book, in that Colette considered it both her best and her most autobiographical.

 

It’s also a book that seems quite prescient, and remarkably relevant today, in its focus on questions of sexual expression and gender identity.

 

Q: The writer Lydia Davis said of your translation, “Rachel Careau, in her attentive, sensitive translation, avails herself of a wide, rich vocabulary and nimble syntax to match Colette’s own linguistic ingenuity.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I am deeply gratified that Lydia Davis saw those qualities in my translation. I worked hard to reproduce those very elements of Colette’s style, both because it’s part of my translation ethos and because earlier translators often failed to do so.

 

Colette was a sophisticated prose stylist, and I think her writing has frequently been “dumbed down.” She had a fascinatingly varied vocabulary, replete with classical and literary usages, specialized and technical words, zoological and botanical terms, slang and argot, and obscure regionalisms.

 

The Pure and the Impure gives us urticant, decretal, moucharaby, batrachian, filiform, ocellated, umbilicate, nance—all of them lost in the earlier translation by Herma Briffault.

 

Syntax reveals how authors think, what is important to them; the order of words, the way ideas unfold in a sentence or across a paragraph, aren’t incidental to the ideas the words express. So I try to attend to the order of words and phrases as closely as I can, given the differences between languages, particularly when the authors themselves are making choices that are nonstandard.

 

Q: What do you see as the significance of the novel’s title?

 

A: That’s a question that Colette scholars have been mulling over for decades! Not easy to answer.

 

Purity as Colette defines it in the book doesn’t have the sexual or moral sense that we might expect; it has more to do with the concept of devotion, of commitment, to an ideal—an ideal that, in this case, finds its expression in gender and sexuality.

 

Purity seems to be a state “free from anything extraneous to the ruling passion,” as the scholar Elaine Marks put it, but it may or may not be chaste.

 

Q: How would you describe Colette’s legacy today?

 

A: I think Colette’s legacy today is threefold.

 

First, there is her image: She was the most-photographed writer of the 20th century, according to Kathleen Antonioli in her new biography Colette, and there are so many striking and widely available photographs of her that I think her image has become inextricably associated with her name and her work.

 

Second, there is her example: As a woman she made her own definition, defying societal norms and expectations, flouting sexual and gender conventions, rising to the top of her profession despite the sometimes patronizing assessments of her work, achieving a number of firsts—first woman elected president of the Académie Goncourt, first woman accorded a state funeral in France…Although she eschewed the feminist label, she nevertheless presents an example for feminists to follow.

 

Third, and most importantly, there are her books: She was considered the greatest 20th-century French prose stylist after Proust (and some would say that as a stylist she exceeds Proust), and she left behind many masterpieces of great insight and artistry, among them Chéri, The End of Chéri, My Mother’s House, Break of Day, Sido, and The Pure and the Impure.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m planning to take a break from translation to return to a project I’ve been working on intermittently for the better part of a decade, a book about my mother, who died by suicide in 1994, when she was 63. It’s evolved formally over time, from a straight narrative to something more fragmentary, collagelike, and associative.

 

The current form, an accumulation of short texts, feels both more manageable and more interesting to me—I started out in graduate school as a poet, and my more recent work has been prose poetry—and I want to see how the project might develop if I can focus on it without interruption.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Many of us—and this includes me—read Colette in our youth. But I think she’s an author who rewards revisiting later in life, especially in some of the newer translations that have been coming out in recent years.

 

At the same time, I hope she will gain a new generation of readers, for the intelligence of her insights, the particularity of her observations, and the elegance of her prose.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb