Thalia Book Club: Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children

 Claire Messud discusses her New York Times Best Book of 2006 with fellow novelist Valerie Martin. The Emperor’s Children is a brilliant contemporary novel of manners that puts under a magnifying glass the flawed ambitions of three college friends on the verge of their thirties, trying to make a place for themselves in New York. To set the tone for this enticing discussion, actress Hope Davis reads an excerpt from the book.

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Performance playlist:

Reading
Hope Davis

Conversation
Claire Messud and Valerie Martin

A Discussion with the Audience

Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children is a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters, were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her second novel, The Last Life, was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and an Editors’ Choice at The Village Voice. All three books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and is the current recipient of the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Hope Davis has appeared in films including Infamous, Proof, About Schmidt, American Splendor, The Secret Lives of Dentists, Mumford, The Daytrippers, Next Stop Wonderland, The Matador and The Hoax. Her theatre credits include Ivanov, Two Shakespearean Actors, Spinning Into Butter, Food Chain and Measure for Measure.

Valerie Martin is the author of the new novel Trespass. She has published three collections of short fiction, most recently The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories, and six other novels, including Italian Fever, The Great Divorce, Mary Reilly and the 2003 Orange Prize-winning Property. She is also the author of a non-fiction work about St. Francis of Assisi, Salvation: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis. She resides in upstate New York.