Interview

Jed Rubenfeld, author of The Interpretation of Murder, talks about the inspiration for his book, and the effort involved in writing a historical fiction novel.

What inspired you to write a book with Freud as a main character?
I'd say the biggest turning point for me was the phenomenal success of my last non-fiction book, Revolution by Judiciary, which was published last summer and which sold, I think, six copies -- four of them to members of my immediate family. When you've conquered a field that completely, there's really not much left for you to do, and you naturally start thinking about trying something new.

Seriously, it was all my wife's idea. She was the one who said I should write a novel, and she was even the one who suggested using my knowledge of Freud in it. Then I remembered something I had known about for years but hadn't focused on a for a long time: the real-life mystery surrounding Freud's one and only visit to America in 1909. Freud came to the United States to deliver lectures at Clark University. The trip was a tremendous success. His lectures were attended by famous figures such as William James. He was portrayed glowingly in newspapers. And psychoanalysis took off in the United States. But despite all this, Freud never returned to America and later spoke of his trip here as if it had scarred him. He called Americans "savages&...