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Ann Patchett is the author of novels, most recently the #1 New York Times bestselling Tom Lake, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize in the U.K., and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.
Ann Patchett's website
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What inspired you to write this novel?
Usually it's hard to pin down the exact point at which you come up
with an idea for a novel but this one is easy: December 17th, 1996, the night
that the terrorist organization Tupac Amaru took over the Japanese embassy in
Lima, Peru. I'm sure I didn't know that day that this story would turn into Bel
Canto, but I was completely focused on it from the start. It had so many
elements that were compelling to me: confinement, survival, the construction of
family. For a long time I'd wanted to find a way to experience the things I
read about in the paper, to grieve for disasters that had no immediate affect on
my life. Turning a tragedy I knew nothing about into this novel was part of that
process.
Were you an opera aficionado prior to writing Bel Canto?
I wasn't. I knew as much about opera as I did about baseball, which
is to say nothing. But once I came up with the character of Roxane Coss I threw
myself into learning about it whole-heartedly. The best thing I did was to buy a
book called Opera 101 by Fred Plotkin. It tells you how to listen and
what to listen to. It takes you through everything you need to know step by
step. It was my bible. Then I listened ...
Katherine Arden is the New York Times bestselling author of the Winternight trilogy and the Small Spaces Quartet. In addition to writing, she enjoys aimless travel, growing vegetables, and running wild through the woods with ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Dutch House
Try:
The Warm Hands of Ghosts
by Katherine Arden
Chloe is a writer from San Francisco, CA. She is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams, which received the 2014 Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. Chloe is a graduate of Vassar ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Commonwealth
Try:
The Immortalists
by Chloe Benjamin
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