Henriette Lazaridis | Terra Nova

Molly talks with author Henriette Lazaridis about her book "Terra Nova".

About Terra Nova

The year is 1910, and two Antarctic explorers, Watts and Heywoud, are racing to the South Pole.  Back in London, Viola, a photo-journalist, harbors love for them both.  In Terra Nova, Henriette Lazaridis seamlessly ushers the reader back and forth between the austere, forbidding, yet intoxicating polar landscape of Antarctica to the bustle of early twentieth century London.

Though anxious for both men, Viola has little time to pine.  She is photographing hunger strikers in the suffrage movement, capturing the female nude in challenging and politically powerful ways. As she comes into her own as an artist, she's eager for recognition and to fulfill her ambitions.  And then the men return, eager to share news of their triumph.   

But in her darkroom, Viola discovers a lie.  Watts and Heywoud have doctored their photos of the Pole to fake their success.  Viola must now decide whether to betray her husband and her lover, or keep their secret and use their fame to help her pursue her artistic ambitions. 

Rich and moving, Terra Nova is a novel that challenges us to consider how love and lies, adventure and art, can intersect. 

About the author

Henriette Lazaridis' novel TERRA NOVA was published by Pegasus Books in December, 2022 and was called "ingenious" and "provocative" by the New York Times. She is the author of the best-selling novel THE CLOVER HOUSE. Her short work has appeared in publications including Elle, Forge, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, New England Review, The Millions, and has earned her a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant. Henriette grew up in the Boston area as the only child of Greek expats, speaking Greek as her first language. Devoted to storytelling since her childhood bedtime stories from the Odyssey, Henriette earned degrees in English literature from Middlebury College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Pennsylvania. Having taught English at Harvard, she now teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in northern Greece. She writes the Substack newsletter The Entropy Hotel, about athletic and creative challenges at henriettelazaridis.substack.com. For more, visit henriettelazaridis.com.

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