Anthony Marra
Anthony Marra
Anthony Marra is an American fiction writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
act capable descent grant humanity men nature novel offer particular view women
A novel can grant humanity even to those who act inhumanely, and by making men and women of monsters, it can offer not only a ground-level view of a particular conflict, but a descent into the substratum of human nature capable of the incomprehensible.
author beyond both empathy experience imagination intense life limits narrow novel
A novel can enlarge the empathy and imagination of both its author and its reader, and my experience, that sense of enlargement is most intense when I'm transported beyond the narrow limits of my daily life.
people regularly taken visited
When I visited Chechnya, I was taken aback at first because people would regularly make jokes about kidnapping me.
happily life literary major quickly realized sure
I quickly realized I live the least interesting literary life imaginable. My parents are happily married. There haven't been any major traumas. I'm not sure that the story of my life would be much fun to read.
nonfiction novel period recent written
I read all of the nonfiction that I could find on Chechnya, and all the while, I was searching for a novel that was set there. I couldn't find a single novel written in English that was set in the period of the two most recent Chechen wars.
characters deeper grown return
Calvin and Hobbes are the only two characters from my childhood reading that I return to with any regularity, and they have grown with me, yielding newer and deeper meaning.
age hit people
I'm wondering when you hit the age where people say, 'Oh, OK, he's not so young.'
spell
I didn't know a single person who had ever been there. I wasn't even sure how to spell Chechnya.
began chechnya final forms northern war
Chechnya forms the bookends to Tolstoy's career. He began writing his first novel, 'Childhood,' while in Starogladovskaya in Northern Chechnya, and his final novel, 'Hadji Murad,' is set in the Russo-Chechen War of the 19th century.
chairs crowded discuss dozen folding joined staircase table youngest
I joined a writing class at a nearby community center, where I was the youngest participant by about 40 years. Once a week, I'd funnel down a staircase and join the dozen retirees crowded in folding chairs around a table to discuss one another's stories.
class college death great literature love novel politics questions russian smitten tackle took writers
I took a 19th-century Russian novel class in college and have been smitten with Russian literature ever since. Writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Grossman, and Solzhenitsyn tackle the great questions of morality, politics, love, and death.
beloved hard met work
It's hard to think of another body of work that is more universally beloved - I don't think I've ever met someone who has encountered 'Calvin and Hobbes' without falling for them.
anymore brain days fiction good knew nights perform retail short sleeping spent stories time written
I wanted to be a writer, but at the time, I spent my days working a retail job, my nights sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and while I had written short stories here and there, I didn't know how to write good fiction anymore than I knew how to perform good brain surgery.
government journalism line manhattan propaganda
At Grozny TV, the line between journalism and government propaganda is traversed as often as a Manhattan crosswalk.