Friends of the Simsbury Public Library Spring Author Luncheon: Claire Messud

The Friends of the Simsbury Public Library will hold its 2025 Annual Author Luncheon on Tuesday, May 6 from 11:30am - 2pm at Hop Meadow Country Club in Simsbury. This year’s featured author is critically-acclaimed author Claire Messud, who will discuss her latest award- winning historical novel, This Strange Eventful History, an immersive masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story. Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. Longlisted for the 2024 Book Prize, the book has been named a best book of the year for historical fiction by the New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe among many.

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction including The Emperor’s Children. A recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she teaches at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Please click here to register: 2025 Annual Author Luncheon