About the Author

Siri Hustvedt, a novelist and scholar, has a PhD in English literature and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. She is the author of a book of poems, seven novels, four collections of essays, and two works of nonfiction. She has published papers in various academic and scientific journals and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, the European Charles Veillon Essay Prize, an American Academy of the Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction for The Blazing World, which was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE BLAZING WORLD LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE "The Blazing World offers a spirited romp...constructed as a Nabokovian cat's cradle....Hustvedt's portrait of the artist as a middle-aged widow is searingly fresh. It's rare to encounter a female protagonist who throws her weight around quite so grandiloquently as Harriet Burden, a heroine who is--well, more like the hero of a Philip Roth or a Saul Bellow novel."-- "New York Times Book Review"

"The Blazing World is poundingly alive with ideas, personalities, conviction, fear, fakery, ambition, and sorrow. The reading mind is set on high, happy alert."-- "The New York Journal of Books"

"The Blazing World is unique and recognizably so, a bracing examination of the act of creation, of fame and identity, gender bias and feminism, love and desire, psychology and philosophy. . . . Full of life and ideas and intellectual prowess, it's also a compelling story with richly drawn characters. . . .[An] extraordinary puzzle."-- "The Miami Herald"

"The Blazing World is Siri Hustvedt's best novel yet, an electrifying work with a titanic, poignantly flawed protagonist. Harriet Burden's rage, turbulence and neediness leap off these pages in a skillfully orchestrated chorus of voices both dark and brilliant."-- "The Washington Post"

"A glorious mashup of storytelling and scholarship. . . .[The Blazing World's] touching conclusion 'blazes hot and bright' from the perspective of an aura reader, Harriet's caretaker, whose vision of the artist's work is at once spiritually charged and whimsical."-- "The San Francisco Chronicle"

"Dazzling. . . ingeniously constructed. . . . The Blazing World is a serious, sometimes profound book, tackling head-on the knotty issues of identity and sense of self, and our unconscious ideas about gender and celebrity. It offers an exhilarating reading experience for anyone willing to meet its challenge."-- "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

"Ingeniously and energetically put together. . . . The Blazing World never runs out of steam in dispensing ideas and peeling back layers of truth."-- "Chicago Tribune"

"Larger-than-life Harry reads vociferously, loves fervently, and overflows with intellectual and creative energy....Hustvedt dissects the art world with ironic insight....This is a funny, sad, through-provoking, and touching portrait of a woman who is blazing with postfeminist fury and propelled by artistic audacity.-- "Publishers Weekly"

"This is feminism in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, or Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: richly complex, densely psychological, dazzlingly nuanced. And at the same time, the book is a spectacularly good read. Its storytelling is magnificent, its characters vivid, its plot gripping; it's rare that a novel of ideas can be so much fun."-- "Slate"

Densely brilliant, but terrifyingly clever too... you don't need a PhD in Kierkegaard to enjoy Hustvedt's writing, and it's a pleasure to feel your brain whirring as it forges links and finds the cracks across differing accounts. Even if The Blazing World is about ambiguity and mutability in everything from authorship to gender to memory, Hustvedt's text is carefully, impressively constructed: she's as convincing in each fictional voice as Harriet is in her masks.-- "The Independent"

In certain respects, The Blazing World is a didactic novel, presenting arguments about the place of gender in American cultural life, yet it avoids preaching or settled judgments by putting at its center a figure whose strongly held beliefs are undermined by the hazards of real life. The effect is more fluid and nuanced than any scholarly study or political diatribe could be.-- "The Wall Street Journal"

Siri Hustvedt has earned her reputation as a brilliant thinker and articulate writer. This is not her first work of fiction, and The Blazing World is strong proof that her talents are unmatched in the genre. . . a delightful, quirky story that shares many truths about women in the arts, and the struggles they encounter in rising to fame.-- "Seattle Post-Intelligencer"

The absence of women artists in the history of painting is an old feminist topic, but it is one The Blazing World approaches head-on.-- "The Guardian"

*BEST BOOKS OF 2016 SELECTION BY * KIRKUS REVIEWS * THE FINANCIAL TIMES *
*BEST BOOKS OF DECEMBER 2016 SELECTION BY * BUSTLE * VULTURE * FLAVORWIRE * "Richly explored...and, when art is the subject, touchingly personal...It's hard to overstate the pleasure and the comfort that such demystification provides...it does indeed make the world feel larger, more expansive, more alive to the touch."
--New York Times Book Review "Insightful."
--Vanity Fair "A wide-ranging, irreverent, and absorbing meditation on thinking, knowing, and being."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Erudite and intellectually sophisticated...Hustvedt is beguiling and wholly present in each lively, first-person, thrillingly interdisciplinary narrative."
--Booklist (starred review) "Canonical . . . A dense, succinct overview of the mind/body problem . . . Conveys the wide range of Hustvedt's reading as she focuses on the interstices between people; between disciplines; and between concepts such as art and science, truth and fiction, feeling and perception."
--Publishers Weekly "Hustvedt has provided us with an impressive collection that celebrates critical thinking."
--The Guardian "We are fortunate to have Hustvedt voicing doubt so intelligently."
--Financial Times "Searing."
--Elle "Erudite."
--Vulture

PRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT'S NONFICTION "A brilliant explorer of brain and mind."
--Oliver Sacks "No one writing about art today comes closer than Siri Hustvedt to the elusive strangeness of a great painting."
--Calvin Tomkins "[Siri Hustvedt] brings both knowledge and an artist's insight to the discussion of memory, language, and personal identity... It is Hustvedt's gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear."
--Hilary Mantel "[Hustvedt's] responses to paintings are both visceral and intellectual...At their best, her essays combine the insights of her intuitive eye with an extensive knowledge of Western painting."
--San Francisco Chronicle "Armed with her great gift for elucidation, the novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt has omnivorously devoured and digested complex debates from neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy and psychoanalysis and journeyed into the mind/body problem."
--George Makari