She is the kind of writer for whom the act of writing is clearly more important than being read.

Most of her novels contain some version of her sister, some version of her mother, some version of herself, some version of the restrictive Canadian Mennonite community in which she was raised. Miriam Toews gets so close to the fire that the pages of her books may as well be singed.

It does not store any personal data.I’ve heard it theorized that every great artist circles her own central fire, a core trauma too bright and too hot to touch yet whose light is caught, refracted, in her works. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Performance'. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Necessary'. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. It’s Jesus to Judas, right before Jesus is grabbed and arrested.) Copyright 2015 Europa Editions.Īlso, “Friend, do what you came to do.” (Matthew 26:50.

Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein.

– Excerpted from The Story of the Lost Child, by Elena Ferrante. And so if she didn’t stay alert, if she didn’t pay attention to the boundaries, the waters would break through, a flood would rise, carrying everything off in clots of menstrual blood, in cancerous polyps, in bits of yellowish fiber.” A tactile emotion would melt into a visual one, a visual one would melt into an olfactory one, ah, what is the real world, Lenù, nothing, nothing, nothing about which one can say conclusively: it’s like that. “She muttered that she mustn’t ever be distracted: if she became distracted real things, which, with their violent, painful contortions, terrified her, would gain the upper hand over the unreal ones, which, with their physical and moral solidity, pacified her she would be plunged into a sticky, jumbled reality and would never again be able to give sensations clear outlines. Do you have a favourite passage/quote from a book?

Miriam toews novels