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Stewart O'Nan Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan Biography

Stewart O'Nan's award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, A Prayer for the Dying, and Last Night at the Lobster. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. He was born and raised and lives in Pittsburgh.

Stewart O'Nan's website

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Interview

A Conversation with Stewart O'Nan about City of Secrets, centered on Jerusalem at the time of the bombing of the King David hotel.

How did you decide to center your new book on the bombing of the King David Hotel?
I've always wanted to know more about the bombing. Most Americans have never heard of it, which seems crazy, especially post-9/11, with our fixation on the uses and abuses of political violence. What kind of characters would consider bombing such a public place a desirable act - so desirable they would risk not only their own lives but those of the people around them to carry it off? In a way, it's the same question Joseph Conrad tried to answer a hundred years ago in The Secret Agent. As usual, writing the book was a way of satisfying my curiosity.

What made you choose to make Brand a Latvian Jew as opposed, to say, coming from a country with a larger Jewish population like Poland or Hungary?
A friend of mine from Lithuania wrote a novel about a family trying to get out in the late '30s. Another friend came from Latvia after the Russians absorbed it, so I associate the Baltic States with complete upheaval. The combination of Russian and German persecution - the strange shift from Russian (during the non-aggression pact) to German and then back to Russian control interested me. Bad enough you get caught up in one wave, but three - ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Stewart O'Nan at BookBrowse
City of Secrets jacket West of Sunset jacket The Odds jacket Emily, Alone jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Stewart O'Nan but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Anthony Doerr

    Anthony Doerr

    Anthony Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of&#... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    City of Secrets

    Try:
    All the Light We Cannot See
    by Anthony Doerr

  • Linda Grant

    Linda Grant

    Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    City of Secrets

    Try:
    When I Lived In Modern Times
    by Linda Grant

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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Top Picks

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    Our Evenings
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    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
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    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
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    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

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    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

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