Nobel laureate poet Louise Glück completes first prose narrative, based on her twin grandchildren, Emmy and Lizzy
- Known for her poetry collections and essays, 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Louise Glück has written a story imagining the thoughts of twins
- The book is based on videos of her granddaughters whom she has been unable to visit because of the coronavirus pandemic
Louise Glück’s next book was as unexpected for her as it will probably be for the Nobel laureate’s readers.
After more than 10 poetry collections and two books of essays, with prizewinners including The Wild Iris and Faithful and Virtuous Night, the 79-year-old American writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, has completed her first prose narrative, to come out in October.
Marigold and Rose: A Fiction runs to 64 pages, and unfolds like a fable as Glück imagines the thoughts of infant twins.
She has written about children before, notably in her acclaimed 1990 collection Ararat. But while her poems were drawn in part from her childhood and her experiences as a parent, Marigold and Rose originates in videos of her granddaughters Emmy and Lizzy sent by her son from California while Glück was unable to visit because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I remember telling someone that watching twins was like going to the zoo; you see behaviour you don’t ordinarily see in babies, because these children are having relationships with each other before they have relationships with almost anyone else,” says Glück, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during a recent telephone interview.