Generated by All in One SEO v5.0.1.1, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site.

# Lynn Freed

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://lynnfreed.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [Here's Your Beginning: A Conversation with Lynn Freed by Nina Moog, The Rumpus](https://lynnfreed.com/heres-your-beginning-a-conversation-with-lynn-freed-by-nina-moog-the-rumpus/) - The biographical details of Lynn Freed, who was born in Durban, South Africa but has lived for many years in the United States, permeate her work. It’s particularly visible in last year’s collection of essays, The Romance of Elsewhere. As the title suggests, the volume deals with Freed’s experiences negotiating expat identity. She asks us to
- [Lynn Freed's 'The Romance of Elsewhere' Is A Funny Look What It's Like To Spend Your Life Traveling](https://lynnfreed.com/lynn-freeds-the-romance-of-elsewhere-is-a-funny-look-what-its-like-to-spend-your-life-traveling/) - If Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz had a literary love child, she would be Lynn Freed — or, at least, the resulting book would be Lynn Freed’s essay collection, The Romance of Elsewhere, on sale from Counterpoint Press on Oct. 10. The collection of 20 previously-published essays spans decades and continents, and is in equal
- [An Interview with Lynn Freed by Sarah Anne Johnson](https://lynnfreed.com/an-interview-with-lynn-freed-by-sarah-anne-johnson/) - October/November 1999 When did you know you wanted to write? I can’t remember ever wanting to write. I just wrote. At first, as a child, and for a number of years into adolescence, I seemed to write partly to show off. I’d write a story or a play — I wrote a lot of plays,
- [20 Questions by PopMatters Staff](https://lynnfreed.com/20-questions-by-popmatters-staff/) - When award-winning writer Lynn Freed stops talking, does her eyebrow immediately arch in irony? In wry challenge? When sharing a bottle of wine with a worthy conversationalist does she sit back and scrutinize? Her delicious replies to PopMatters 20 Questions may have you wishing, like us, that she could be your dinner guest. The world
- [Mystic Journey by Sarah Anne Johnson](https://lynnfreed.com/mystic-journey-by-sarah-anne-johnson/) - Novelist Lynn Freed plunges into a tumultuous underworld of emotion June 2002 How did you get started writing fiction? Every week at school, we were given the choice of writing either an essay or a story as homework. I used to choose a story because it seemed so much easier, so much less terrifying. And
- [Durban Renewal by Joanna Smith Rakoff](https://lynnfreed.com/durban-renewal-by-joanna-smith-rakoff/) - January 23rd, 2006 Lynn Freed’s odd, elegant novels take place in and around the Jewish community of Durban, South Africa, where the author spent her early years. Though she once regarded the city as “hopelessly provincial, a backwater,” in her fiction Durban emerges as a fascinating hub, where four cultures intersect: British, Jewish, African, and
- [Lynn Freed Interviewed by Thomas Cooney, Mary Magazine](https://lynnfreed.com/lynn-freed-interviewed-by-thomas-cooney-mary-magazine/) - Thomas Cooney: How is the tennis game? Lynn Freed: Appalling, partly, I think, because I don’t care who wins. Same goes for Scrabble, Monopoly, spectator sports of any kind, and much else. TC: The Mirror was the first book of yours I read. As others had, I too succumbed to the narrative voice that was so strong, so
- [READING, WRITING, AND LEAVING HOME: LIFE ON THE PAGE](https://lynnfreed.com/reading-writing-and-leaving-home-life-on-the-page/) - A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A Washington Post Best Book of the Year “Leaving home is perhaps the central experience of the Writer’s life. It is this enigma that informs the writer’s perspective – the restless pursuit of a way back while remaining steadfastly at a distance.” Equal parts revelation and inspiration,
- [THE CURSE OF THE APPROPRIATE MAN](https://lynnfreed.com/the-curse-of-the-appropriate-man/) - Notable Book of the Year, New York Times Book Review Lynn Freed has been widely praised as one of most fearless and sophisticated explorers of sexual and filial love. These fourteen short stories, written over the past ten years but never before collected, are vintage Freed. They deal with the struggle between mothers and their
- [HOUSE OF WOMEN](https://lynnfreed.com/house-of-women/) - Notable Book of the Year, New York Times Book Review House of Women is the story of three unusual women – seventeen-year-old Thea, her mother Nalia, an opera singer and Holocaust survivor, and Maude, their dour and religious housekeeper. It is the story of how the world changes for each of them when a man
- [THE MIRROR](https://lynnfreed.com/the-mirror/) - This is the story of Agnes La Grange, a beautiful young woman who emigrates as a housekeeper to South Africa in 1920. With a determination to make a future of her own and a love of men that does not leave her in desperate need of them, Agnes constructs a life beyond the conventions of
- [THE BUNGALOW](https://lynnfreed.com/the-bungalow/) - In 1975, Ruth Frank, married and living in the United States, returns to South Africa to visit her aging parents. There she resumes an old liaison with Hugh Stillington, liberal man of Africa, who lives in a bungalow overlooking the Indian Ocean. Hugh’s world is a South Africa Ruth has never known — lush, wild,
- [HOME GROUND](https://lynnfreed.com/home-ground/) - Set in South Africa in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, this is the story of Ruth, youngest of three daughters in the flamboyant, theatrical Frank family. Brash, clear-eyed and passionate, Ruth moves through a decade of drama on every front — the family, the servants, the theatre, and the country at large—wondering always how she will
- [FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY](https://lynnfreed.com/friends-of-the-family/) - At thirty-six, Marion Roth is settled, uneasily, into a life of middle class order—a house on a good street, a career and family in place. And then she meets José, her natural opposite. He is sensual, artistic, impulsive, desirable, and also, unfortunately, the object of her daughter’s teenage passion. Following her impulses, Marion swerves off
- [THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS](https://lynnfreed.com/the-servants-quarters/) - This complex and sophisticated love story evokes a vanishing world of privilege with a Pygmalion twist. Haunted by phantoms of the Second World War and the Holocaust, young Cressida lives in terror of George Harding, who, severely disfigured, has returned from the front to recover in his family’s stately African home. When he plucks young
- [THE ROMANCE OF ELSEWHERE](https://lynnfreed.com/the-romance-of-elsewhere/) - From early on, Lynn Freed had imagined for herself an ideal life: a stranger in a strange place – someone just arrived, just about to leave, and always with somewhere to go home to. As a teenager on an exchange program from South Africa to the U.S., she made up fantastic reasons to escape high
- [THE LAST LAUGH](https://lynnfreed.com/the-last-laugh/) - Three self-proclaimed “old bags” run off to a Greek island to escape their children and grandchildren. At first, barefoot and contented, they think they’ve rediscovered the wheel. But then things begin to go awry. Dionysus, a local poet, takes up with Bess, at least until his wife gets wind of things. Dania, a therapist, is

## Pages

- [Bio & Education](https://lynnfreed.com/bio-education/) - LYNN FREED was born and grew up in Durban, South Africa. She came to New York as a graduate student, receiving her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Columbia University. After moving to San Francisco, she wrote her first novel, HEART CHANGE (republished as FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY). Since then, she has published six more novels:
- [Photographs](https://lynnfreed.com/photographs/) - To download any of the photographs of Lynn Freed, please click on one of the thumbnails below and save to your hard drive. All photographs are in PNG format. Please credit photographers. For permission to use Nancy Crampton’s photographs, please contact the photographer (212.254.1135).
- [Fiction/Memoir](https://lynnfreed.com/fiction-memoir/) - "Carrying On" Memoir, Harper's Magazine, May, 2020 "We Were So Happy Then: Life In The New South Africa" Memoir, Harper's Magazine, March, 2019 "A Too Close Encounter" Traveler's Tale, The Wall Street Journal, January, 2018 "Honky, Napoleon & the Empress Wu" Memoir, Harper's Magazine, February, 2015 (Included in "THE ROMANCE OF ELSEWHERE) "The Way Things Are Going" Story, Harper's Magazine, August,
- [Essays/Articles](https://lynnfreed.com/essays-articles/) - "Five Best: Lynn Freed on Paradise Lost" Review, The Wall Street Journal, September, 2020 "Doing No Harm: Reading & Writing in the Age of Umbrage" Essay, Narrative Magazine, Jan. 2016 (Included in "THE ROMANCE OF ELSEWHERE") "When Enough is Enough: Age and the Creative Impulse" Essay, Narrative Magazine, Feb. 2013 (Included in "THE ROMANCE OF ELSEWHERE") "Durban" Essay, Newsweek International/The Daily Beast, July,

## Categories

- [Interviews](https://lynnfreed.com/category/interviews/)
- [Books](https://lynnfreed.com/category/books/)
- [Home](https://lynnfreed.com/category/home/)