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Hans Christian Anderson hoped to find a household straight out of a Charles Dickens novel when he visited the Dickens family at their country home in the summer of 1857. 

Instead, he found a marriage in shambles, a band of miserable and neglected children and a host who was desperately hoping Anderson would leave — the sooner, the better.

But Anderson didn’t leave. He lingered, for five awkward and painful weeks, while the Dickens family disintegrated around him. 

Francine Prose takes this historic moment and fictionalizes it in her new novel, “Five Weeks in the Country.” Told from multiple perspectives, the book details the very public dissolution of the Dickens family and the very modern question of what to do when good art is produced by a terrible person. 

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Prose and host Kerri Miller tackle it all — including why Prose likes reality TV, how she grapples with being a fan of Dickens work without liking Dickens the person, and what it means to write risky, even after you’ve written 23 novels.

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Francine Prose reimagines an 1857 visit that Hans Christian Anderson made to Charles Dickens at the exact wrong moment in her new novel, “Five Weeks in the Country.” 

'Five Weeks in the Country' with Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Anderson

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