Francine Prose

2 months ago | nybooks.com | Francine Prose

It must be hard to find the appropriate tone in which to tell a family horror story that goes back generations—a problem compounded when an ancestor was not the innocent victim of that horror but one of its perpetrators, or at least a willfully obtuse collaborator. One doesn’t want to sound reflexively judgmental or apologetic, secretly proud of one’s criminal DNA, or resentful of the burden levied by the sins of the dead.

Mar 4, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Francine Prose

The dystopian novels that frighten me most aren’t the ones about the struggle to survive on a planet destroyed by climate catastrophe, plague or nuclear war. The scariest, in my view, are the ones that hit closer to home. They take our everyday reality and tweak it a little, or a lot. They know what keeps us up at night. They say: Here’s what society looks like when your worst nightmares have become your waking life.

Jan 27, 2025 | earlybirdbooks.com | Kayleigh Donaldson |Francine Prose

American writer Francine Prose is known for many things. She's a novelist, a short story writer, a critic, an essayist, and a professor of literature. For several years, she was president of PEN American Center, an organization dedicated to the degense of free speech and expression through the written word. Her books include fiction, nonfiction (with works on historical icons like Anne Frank, Cleopatra, and Peggy Guggenheim), children's stories, and reviews in a variety of publications.

Jan 13, 2025 | theguardian.com | Francine Prose

When I send anxious texts to friends in Los Angeles – friends who have been evacuated or who are waiting to leave , friends escaping a fire zone, wondering if their life’s work has been destroyed, worrying about the smoke’s effect on an asthmatic child – I always begin with the same three words:are you okay? But a continent away, watching photos and videos of a city I love being incinerated, overcome by waves of terror, grief and mourning, I have other questions.

Dec 12, 2024 | criterion.com | Francine Prose

Essays— Dec 10, 2024 It’s no country for old men, but—old, young, men, women—we’ve probably been there before. It’s the country where you’re ambling along, minding your own business, when you find a stolen fortune that someone has buried and never claimed—or that someone has died protecting. It’s the country where the lucky windfall turns out to be the fatal curse, the country where money is a key, not to the mansion on the hill but to the labyrinth of the monster.