One World Trade Center, under construction. June 2011.

In the years since the horrible events of September 11, several non-fiction books recounting the tragedy, like The 9/11 Commission Report, have been bestsellers. However, as the 10th anniversary looms near, a singular work of fiction that defines the era has failed to emerge. Novelist and playwright Norman Mailer advised a fellow writer to wait a decade before addressing the attacks in print because “it will take that long for you to make sense of it.” Was he right?

“The world has changed since 9/11 and our culture has changed but I haven’t yet seen the book or the movie or the poem or the song that captures the people we are now and helps us redefine who we are in this new post 9/11 world,” says journalist Lawrence Wright in an interview with Reuters. Read more…

Shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, author Barbara Kingsolver published a series of op-ed pieces in several major U.S. newspapers calling for a meaningful national dialog and asking leaders to consider dissenting opinions, and was shocked at the harsh criticism and hate mail she received. “A lot of people were frightened, and when people are frightened, they want to burn witches. They want to run somebody up the flagpole…,” she explains in an interview with The Guardian. “It was really one of the worst times of my life.” A few months later, Kingsolver decided to channel all that fear and anger into something positive and started research on a new project, which would grow to be The Lacuna. “I have to make something of this,” she thought at the time. “I have to take all this bile and hatred and make something beautiful.”
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