A revelatory exploration of the writer's art, by the
bestselling author of the V. I. Warshawski
novels.
In this powerful new book, Sara Paretsky
explores the traditions of political and literary dissent
that have informed her life and work, against the
unparalleled repression of free speech and thought in the
USA today. In tracing the writer's difficult journey from
silence to speech, she turns to her childhood and youth in
rural Kansas, and brilliantly evokes Chicago—the city with
which she has become indelibly associated—from her arrival
during the civil-rights struggle in the mid-1960s to her
most extraordinary literary creation, the south-side
detective V. I. Warshawski. Paretsky traces the emergence of
V. I. Warshawski from the shadows of the loner detectives
that stalk the mean streets of Dashiell Hammett's and
Raymond Chandler's novels, and in the process explores
American individualism, the failure of the American dream,
and the resulting dystopia. Both memoir and meditation,
Writing in an Age of Silence is a compelling
exploration of the writer's art and daunting responsibility
in the face of the assault on US civil liberties post-9/11.