Foreign Affairs

Alison Lurie has published ten novels, among them Foreign Affairs (which won the Pulitzer Prize), The Truth About Lorin Jones (winner of the Prix Femina étranger), and The Last Resort. She is also the author of many works of non-fiction, including The Language of Clothes, Don't Tell the Grownups, Familiar Spirits (a memoir of the poet James Merrill) and two collections of essays and reviews, Reading for Fun and Words and Worlds. She taught literature, folklore and creative writing at Cornell University for many years and is now the Whiton Professor of American Literature emerita. She lives in upstate New York but has also spent much time in Key West, Florida and in London, all of which have provided settings for her fiction. She is married to the writer Edward Hower, and has three sons and three grandchildren.

"The seventh and latest work of fiction by Alison Lurie, who teaches English at Cornell University and has quietly but surely established herself as one of this country's most able and witty novelists... Wonderfully stimulating for its sheer performance as a novel." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt New York Times "I am convinced that Alison Lurie's fiction will long outlast that of many currently more fashionable names. There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy over the years. Foreign Affairs earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton" -- John Fowles Sunday Times "A brilliant novel - her best I think. The book is a triumph, and not simply of style...Foreign Affairs is witty, acerbic, and sometimes fiendishly clever" -- Paul Bailey Evening Standard "Warm, clever and funny" Times Literary Supplement