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Claire Messud

This Strange Eventful History

★★★★★
★★★★★
€17.50
A01=Claire Messud
Algeria
Algerian war of independence
Algiers
Australia
Author_Claire Messud
award-winning author
Battle of Algiers
Beirut
books about family
books about politics
books set in france
books with a political backdrop
Buenos Aires
Category=FBA
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
family epic
fleet
fleet books
historical fiction
little brown
little brown book group
mining company
Paris
Paul Harding
pieds-noirs
Salonika
Second World War fiction
south of France
the woman upstairs
World War Two fiction
yiyun li

Product details

  • ISBN 9780349127071
  • Weight: 360g
  • Dimensions: 126 x 196mm
  • Publication Date: 22 May 2025
  • Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

'An epic family odyssey' Guardian, Book of the Day

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the Cassar family is buffeted by conflict, struggling to find its feet - separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all.

This Strange Eventful History is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by her own family's history, Claire Messud animates her characters' rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. This Strange Eventful History is an immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history.

'[A] wise and insightful novel about identity and family' The Times, Book of the Day

'A rich, sprawling saga... This Strange Eventful History may be Messud's finest book' Sunday Telegraph
About Claire Messud
Claire Messud is a recipient of 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