Six notable literary escapes

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and Wanted, The Newlyweds and The Dissident, and of the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Named one of The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” in 2010, she is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and son.

At The Week magazine Freudenberger recommended six literary escapes, including:

Disoriental by Negar Djavadi (2016).

A woman visits a fertility clinic in Paris, hoping to have a child, while her family's past in Iran rises up before her in dazzlingly precise vignettes. The daughter of intellectuals, Kimia Sadr survives the revolution and a harrowing escape to France, where, Djavadi writes, "we unlearn — at least partially — what we used to be, to make room for what we have become."

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue