Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A conversation about Claire Messud's sweeping, intimate family saga of love, loss, and exile traversing Algeria, France, the US, and beyond.
Filmed on 15/1/2025 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
A work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, "This Strange Eventful History" (Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize) 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.
This event was moderated by Distinguished Professor, novelist, critic, and translator Dan Gunn.
About the speakers:
Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.
Dan Gunn is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature & English at The American University of Paris. He is a novelist, critic, and translator. His critical works include "Psychoanalysis and Fiction: an exploration of literary and psychoanalytic borders" and "Wool-gathering or How I Ended Analysis". His novels include "Almost You" and "Body Language". He is Director of AUP’s Center for Writers & Translators and Series Editor of the ‘Cahiers Series’. He was co-editor of the four-volume "Letters of Samuel Beckett" and is currently editing "The Letters of Muriel Spark".
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
A conversation about Claire Messud's sweeping, intimate family saga of love, loss, and exile traversing Algeria, France, the US, and beyond.
Filmed on 15/1/2025 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
A work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, "This Strange Eventful History" (Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize) 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.
This event was moderated by Distinguished Professor, novelist, critic, and translator Dan Gunn.
About the speakers:
Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.
Dan Gunn is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature & English at The American University of Paris. He is a novelist, critic, and translator. His critical works include "Psychoanalysis and Fiction: an exploration of literary and psychoanalytic borders" and "Wool-gathering or How I Ended Analysis". His novels include "Almost You" and "Body Language". He is Director of AUP’s Center for Writers & Translators and Series Editor of the ‘Cahiers Series’. He was co-editor of the four-volume "Letters of Samuel Beckett" and is currently editing "The Letters of Muriel Spark".
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
