Chris Bohjalian biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Readalikes

Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian

How to pronounce Chris Bohjalian: boh-ZHAHL-ee-yen

Chris Bohjalian Biography

Chris Bohjalian is the author of twenty books, including The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; The Double Bind; and Midwives which was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. Chris's work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and three novels have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). Chris lives in Vermont and can be found at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Litsy, and Goodreads.

Chris Bohjalian's website

This bio was last updated on 03/05/2018. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

Chris Bohjalian discusses his 2012 novel, Sandcastle Girls, which explores the Armenian Genocide - a novel which he says has been gestating since his childhood visits to the home of his Armenian grandparents.

For additional interviews with Chris Bohjalian, please see the reading guides for Midwives and Skeletons at the Feast

The story behind the story: The kernel that led to the novel, The Sandcastle Girls

Sometimes my novels have positively elephantine gestation periods - and even that, in some cases, is an underestimate. A mother elephant carries her young for not quite two years; I have spent, in some cases, not quite two decades contemplating the tiniest seed of a story and wondering how it might grow into a novel.

Moreover, in the quarter-century I've been writing books, I've realized two things about a lengthy gestation period. First, the longer I spend allowing an idea to take root inside me, the better the finished book; second, the more time I spend thinking about a book, the less time I spend actually writing it. Here's a confession: The first draft of the novel for which I may always be known best, Midwives, took a mere (and eerily appropriate) nine months to write. Skeletons at the Feast, another book I will always be proud of, took only 10. But I spent a long time pondering both of these novels before ever setting a single word down on paper.

Perhaps in no case has the relationship between reflection ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Chris Bohjalian at BookBrowse
The Lioness jacket The Red Lotus jacket The Flight Attendant jacket The Sleepwalker jacket
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Readalikes

All the books below are recommended as readalikes for Chris Bohjalian but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose readalikes

  • Diane Ackerman

    Diane Ackerman

    Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of many highly acclaimed works of nonfiction, including A Natural History of the Senses -- a book beloved by readers all over the world and the volumes Deep Play, A... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Sandcastle Girls

    Try:
    The Zookeeper's Wife
    by Diane Ackerman

  • Jokha Alharthi

    Jokha Alharthi

    Jokha Alharthi is the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English, and Celestial Bodies is the first book translated from Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. She is the author of two previous ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Sandcastle Girls

    Try:
    Celestial Bodies
    by Jokha Alharthi

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View all 40 Readalikes

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