Claire Messud's novels include The Emperor's Children, The Woman Upstairs, and The Burning Girl.
Her new book is Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write, an autobiography in essays.
At The Week magazine Messud tagged six works by masters of interiority. One title on the list:
Alice Munro: Selected Stories (1996).Read about another entry on the list.Munro knows her world, and every facet of her characters, to bedrock. She conveys more in a single story than most writers do in a novel. Her prose is glorious — concrete, restrained, with the occasional, always justified, lyrical fillip — and her insight pitiless. She sees everything but knows that life is mysterious, that self-knowledge and the knowledge of others are fractured and partial.
Alice Munro's Selected Stories is among Meg Wolitzer's five favorite books by women writers, Carolyn Cooke's top ten legendary short story collections, and Andre Dubus III's five most essential books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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