“Never mind guessing the solution,” says the British author, whose new book is “Humanly Possible.” “I often can’t understand that solution even when it’s explained at the end.”
Her 2004 novel, “Luna,” broke new ground by having a transgender teenager as a main character. That book and others she wrote have been targets of conservatives.
A former English teacher with a modest writing career in Britain, he found fame in 1981 with an inventive story of an opera singer, Freud and the Holocaust.
Sarah Bakewell’s sweeping new survey of the philosophical tradition, “Humanly Possible,” says that putting your faith in human behavior means confronting complacency and nihilism — but it can be worth it.
She was acclaimed in Yugoslavia. But when that country fell apart, she refused to embrace the nationalism of the newly formed Croatia and was vilified as a result.
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton’s “Black Chameleon,” Laura Cathcart Robbins’s “Stash” and Christine Barker’s “Third Girl From the Left” offer stories of perseverance and ultimate triumph.