The Last Life - Softcover

The Last Life tells the story of the teenage Sagesse LaBasse and her family, French Algerian emigrants haunted by their history, brought to the brink of destruction by a single reckless act. Observed with a fifteen-year-old's ruthless regard for truth, it is a novel about secrets and ghosts, love and honour, the stories we tell ourselves and the lies to which we cling. It is a work of stunning emotional power, written in prose of matchless iridescence and grace. `Powerful, Gripping, dark at its heart, this is an almost faultless novel' Evening Standard `A joy to read. Messud's prose is lush, incantatory . . . her observations are funnily astute, brimming with wit and imagination . . . as elegant and precise as geometry' Independent `Mesmerizing . . . Ms Messud has written a large and resonant novel that is as artful as it is affecting' New York Times

Claire Messud was educated at Yale and Cambridge. Her first novel, When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters , were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award; her second novel, The Last Life , was a Publishers' Weekly Best Book of the Year; all three books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship and the Straus Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with her husband and children.