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NICOLE KRAUSS

NYS Writers Institute, May 3, 2006
4:15 p.m. Seminar | Standish Room, Science Library
7:30 p.m. Reading [Note early start time] | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Nicole Krauss is the author of the "New York Times" bestseller, "The History of Love" (2005). A selection of the Today Show Book Club, "The History of Love" has been optioned for a movie by Warner Brothers, to be directed by Alfonso Cuarón (director of "Y Tu Mamá También" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban"). A portion of the novel was published in the "New Yorker."

The novel tells the story of Leo Gursky, a wisecracking, elderly Jewish locksmith who lives on the Lower East Side. Sixty years earlier, in Poland, Gursky had written a novel, and had entrusted it to a friend whom, Gursky assumed, had perished in the Holocaust. One day, however, the novel turns up in Spanish, having been published in Chile under his friend's name. The novel is notable for the exceptional richness of its language, and for the breathtaking surprises of its plot.

"Nothing in this novel is a mere verbal pirouette. The authenticity of the humour contrasted with the sadness is extraordinarily moving. Krauss is the real thing; 'The History of Love' is a novel to be read and reread."

"A mesmerizing novel about the search for truth and the power of the written word…. Nicole Krauss is the writing angel I imagine Virginia Woolf would have leapt to praise." - Denise Gess, "Atlanta Journal-Constitution"

[Krauss chronicles] "the survival of the human spirit against all odds. Writing with tenderness about eccentric characters, she uses earthy humor to mask pain and to question the universe… her imagination encompasses many worlds." - "Publisher's Weekly" (starred review)

Krauss's first novel, which she published at the age of 27, was "Man Walks into a Room" (2002), the story of Samson Greene, a man who has forgotten who he is, and everything he knows.

"Nicole Krauss, with this remarkably felt, sharp-witted debut novel, strides into the forecourt of American letters." - Susan Sontag

"'Man Walks into a Room' is that rare thing: an evocative, finely written first novel that is a true work of fiction. In Samson Greene, Nicole Krauss has created a character whose loss of memory echoes the cultural amnesia, the loss of history that threatens to make our future more dangerous than our past." - A. M. Homes

Nicole Krauss is married to fellow bestselling novelist, Jonathan Safran Foer.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.