Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai's new novel is The Great Believers.

From her Q&A with Jennifer Solheim at Fiction Writers Review:

Jennifer Solheim: I’m going to make a jerk move by asking a deceptively simple question to begin. The raison d’être of The Great Believers is the story of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago. You had the idea before the 2015 Paris attacks to set the contemporary narrative there. But then this leads me to wonder: why Paris?

Rebecca Makkai: Actually, Paris came first. But it was 1920s Paris, which is now only a subplot in the book (and we’re never there in scene). I wanted to write about a woman who’d been an artist’s muse around WWI, and things evolved from there. (This was all before I even started writing; for every novel, I spend a few months stewing on things and working it out mentally, and it was during this time that it really shifted to being a book about AIDS.) When I realized—quite a way into the process—that I wanted a contemporary narrative in there as well, it made sense to me to bring things full circle and have Paris in...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Rebecca Makkai's website, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Borrower.

The Page 69 Test: The Hundred-Year House.

My Book, The Movie: The Hundred-Year House.

My Book, The Movie: The Great Believers.

--Marshal Zeringue