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Claire Messud has long wanted to write a novel inspired by her family’s history in Algeria, thanks to a handwritten memoir, more than 1,500 pages long, penned by her paternal grandfather. It was rich with stories and history and photos about her ancestors, who were born in French Algeria but then expelled from their homes in 1962 when Algeria won its independence.

,” was inspired by that personal past. It sprawls across generations, geography and time, moving from 1940 to 2010, and across multiple points of view.

In fact, MPR News host Kerri Miller says the way Messud plays with time is one of the vital threads of the book — and Messud admits time is almost a character in the novel. “The past informs the present,” she says. “People’s dreams and hopes for the future inform the present, and in a funny way, the ghosts of the past — the people who are no longer there but whose voices swirl around in our head — make sure the past is always with us.”

Join Miller and Messud on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to take a journey into memory, time and the longing for home. 

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Novelist Claire Messud plumbs ancestral photo albums, diaries and a huge memoir for her new novel, “This Strange Eventful History.”

Claire Messud’s new novel in inspired by her own family’s history

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