She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1998 to 2008 she was the Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at Oxford. She was awarded the Biographers’ Club Prize for Exceptional Contribution to Biography in 2018. She has also written books on Elizabeth Bowen, Philip Roth and Willa Cather, an OUP Very Short Introduction to Biography, and a collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts. She is a biographer and critic whose work includes biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006) and Penelope Fitzgerald (2013), and Tom Stoppard (2020). Hermione Lee was President of Wolfson College from 2008 to 2017 and is Emeritus Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford University.
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“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” -The Washington Postįrom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” ( The New York Times Book Review).Īmong the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book. On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more Vincent, tests the bonds of friendship with unexpected results.
The most obvious – and relevant – reason that two people who love each other can’t be together is that one or both is already married, and they are loathe to divorce their spouse for family reasons. What then should serve as the obstacle in the relationship? What causes the bittersweet ending? Why can’t the two people be together? And besides, in novels where “love is supposed to conquer all,” most readers want to believe that almost any obstacle can be overcome Yes, prejudice still exists and in small pockets of society, such issues might still predominate, but as a general rule, prejudice is frowned upon, and I strive to write novels that feel universal to the majority of people. Class, race, feuds and religion were “fair game,” but in the 21st century – and especially in the United States – these issues simply don’t ring as true. Why, after all, if two people love each other, can’t they be together?Ī hundred years ago, stories like these were much easier to craft. The problem, however, is that such novels are exceedingly difficult to conceive, let alone write. I love to craft a novel – like The Notebook – in which the characters long to be together but can’t, for fate has conspired to keep them apart. While I’ve earned a reputation as an author who specializes in tragic endings, I want to go on record as saying that my favorite novels to write are those with bittersweet endings. |