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Daniel Mason Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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

Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason

Daniel Mason Biography

Daniel Mason was born and raised in Northern California. He studied biology at Harvard, and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. His first novel, The Piano Tuner, published in 2002, was a national bestseller and has since been published in 27 countries. His other works include A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon Earth, and his writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine and Lapham's Quarterly. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Daniel Mason's website

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Interview

Daniel Mason discusses his novel The Winter Soldier and how it was informed by his background in medicine.

It has been over 11 years since your last novel, A Far Country, was published. Can you describe how The Winter Soldier came about?

I think it is probably closer to 14 or 15 years— I began thinking of some of the characters back in 2003, during my last year of medical school. But I put aside those early sketches to work more fully on A Far Country. When I finally began working on The Winter Soldier full-time, it was a very different novel from the book I eventually would finish. I had originally been drawn to World War One and the interwar period because of my interest in the early study of the art of asylum patients, and the first version of the book involved a triangle of a patient, her husband, and her doctor. I struggled a lot with this version-- for almost six years and at least three drafts. Meanwhile, over the course of this time, I kept returning to this historical moment when the Austro-Hungarian army, utterly unprepared for the war, enlisted medical students with virtually no clinical experience for posts of extraordinary responsibility. As someone who had recently graduated from medical school, I was stunned to imagine these other students, across time and space, finding themselves suddenly in charge of entire ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Daniel Mason at BookBrowse
North Woods jacket A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth jacket The Winter Soldier jacket A Far Country jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Daniel Mason 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

  • Audrey Blake

    Audrey Blake

    Audrey Blake is the pseudonym of Jaima Fixsen and Regina Sirois, two authors who met online in a survivor style writing contest. They live 1500 miles apart, but both are prairie girls: Jaima hails from Alberta, Canada, and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Winter Soldier

    Try:
    The Girl in His Shadow
    by Audrey Blake

  • Ash Davidson

    Ash Davidson

    Ash Davidson was born in Arcata, California, and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts and MacDowell. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    North Woods

    Try:
    Damnation Spring
    by Ash Davidson

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