Claire Messud with Georgina Godwin: This Strange Eventful History

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024, as well as an Oprah most anticipated book of 2024, Claire Messud’s seventh novel traces three generations of an itinerant French family with roots in colonial Algeria. “One of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters…”—Yiyun Li. Inspired by her own ancestors being forced to roam as a result of displacement, the novel charts the odyssey of a family torn apart by war, politics, and religion. She discusses the joys and pitfalls that come from fictionalizing one’s own relatives with Monocle journalist and broadcaster Georgina Godwin.  

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