Claire Messud

Claire Messud may be best known to most readers as the author of the 2006 bestseller and Booker-prize nominated novel The Emperor's Children, a diamond-sharp satire of wealth, privilege, power and self-deception set just before and after the events of September 11th, 2001.  But her new novel the Burning Girl explores the haunted terrain of a lost childhood friendship and follows two young women into a confrontation with adulthood fraught with perils both familiar and enigmatic. This week, Claire Messud joins Bill Tipper to talk about her new book, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to explain the inexplicable.