Womens Prize For Fiction Winner
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
Summary
A quiet young man drifts between Mexico and the United States, working for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo before American politics turns on him. Kingsolver braids fiction with real history to examine art, exile and the destructive reach of McCarthyism. The novel asks what a country owes the writers and outsiders it chooses to fear.
”
Historical Context & Significance
Kingsolver's first prize win came for a sweeping historical novel spanning the Mexican muralists and the Red Scare.