Author(s): Claire Messud

Novel | Historical | Booker Prize 2024 long list

June1940. As Paris falls to the Germans, Gaston Cassar - honorable servant of France, devoted husband and father, currently posted as naval attache in Salonica - bids farewell to his beloved wife, aunt and children, placing his faith in God that they will be reunited after the war. But escaping the violence of that cataclysm is not the same as emerging unscathed. The family will never again be whole.

A work of breathtaking historical sweep and vivid psychological intimacy, This Strange Eventful History charts the Cassars' unfolding story as its members move between Salonica and Algeria, the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia and France - their itinerary shaped as much by a search for an elusive wholeness, as by the imperatives of politics, faith, family, industry and desire.

Review: This epic family saga, which stretches from Algeria in 1927 to Connecticut in 2010 . . . [is a] wise and insightful novel about identity and family, and how love can stifle as well as comfort * The Times, Book of the Day *
A rich, sprawling saga . . . This Strange Eventful History may be Messud's finest book * Sunday Telegraph *
Wonderfully enjoyable, intelligent, perceptive, moving . . . written with such affection and understanding, such an awareness of the passing of time and of the unavoidably bruising nature of experience which is nevertheless redeemed by love, loyalty, and kindness . . . It is indeed rare to come upon a novel which offers such a cornucopia of pleasure, such a sense of the physical world and the reality of experience * Scotsman *
A novel of how families are scattered across borders by the uncontrollable forces of history... a fascinating and wise work. It is about a family, but it is also about the inexorable sands of time which slip through our fingers from one minute to the next * Sunday Independent *
Claire Messud has transformed three generations of her family's story into a tour de force inThis Strange Eventful History . . . all around them are the upheavals of the 20th century, but though Messud is working on a grand canvas, her skill is in miniature. History is dazzling in its fine-tuned character studies . . . all beautifully realized. This is a pointillist novel, profound in its portrayal of strains, bonds, and heartbreak * Vogue *
Almost unbearably moving, wise and full of the most gorgeous prose -- Alex Preston * Observer Novels to Look Out For in 2024 *
Deeply intertwined with the sociopolitical upheaval of the twentieth century, and inspired by the author's own family history, this sweeping narrative is as intimate as it is profound. All of Messud's work is masterful, but this novel is her masterpiece * Oprah Daily *
An epic cross-generational story that follows a pieds-noirs family separated in the chaos of World War II and made adrift without a homeland after Algerian independence. The novel's ingenuity and ambitious scope can't be underestimated; This Strange Eventful History is nothing less than a literary event, sure to surprise and delight at every turn * Chicago Review of Books *
An epic exploration of a family's long and often tortured history. Though the novel is both sweeping and intimate, spanning seven decades and six continents, from World War II through the aughts, Messud's piercing interiority keeps the focus tight, gaining the reader access to her characters' innermost thoughts. Her attention to detail, memory, and foreshadowing suggest the influence of Tolstoy and Proust * Boston Globe *
Messud's expansive novel is a family chronicle set between 1940 and 2010 that doubles as an album of itinerancy, tracking the Cassars' restless journeys across six continents and illuminating the rootlessness that gripped the generation raised in the aftermath of World War II . . . Messud's patiently detailed personality studies acquire emotional force, particularly as cracks begin to show in the Cassar mythology . . . [This Strange Eventful History] skillfully build[s] to a low but steady boil while delivering quiet, elliptical moments that nevertheless linger in the mind * Wall Street Journal *
Profound and exacting... an epic involving several generations of a diasporic family on a volatile earth * Literary Review *
The big questions are here, about family and colonialism and grief. But the real promise of a 425-page family epic is that it will provide an emotional punch, too. On that, it delivers.... it's hard not to be hypnotized * Vulture.com *
In a major new novel from the author of The Woman Upstairs, a family is dispersed across the globe in the wake of the second world war * Guardian 'Books to Look Out For in 2024' *
A tour de force, This Strange Eventful History is one of those rare novels which a reader doesn't merely read but lives through with the characters. Call it the War and Peace of the 20th and 21st century, call it The Long View of a family migrating through many borders, worlds, and eras, call it anything and we fall short. Claire Messud is a magnificent storyteller, and the novel, an all-encompassing history of many human hearts and any human heart, will linger and haunt us as the best and the most heartbreaking memory -- Yiyun Li