Katharine Weber

Katharine Weber is the author, most recently, of Triangle, which was longlisted for the 2008 International Dublin Impac Literary Award.

Earlier this month, I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I am reading strangely at the moment.

I am deep into Sigmund Freud's 1919 essay on The Uncanny, Das Unheimliche -- which translates literally, as "unhomely." He invented this concept as a way of contemplating and understanding those moments when something feels familiar yet foreign or alien at the same time, so the consequent feeling is of something uncomfortably strange. Novelists do well to think about the uncanny.

I am also reading and rereading Helen Bannerman's 1899 classic for children, The Story of Little Black Sambo. It figures hugely in Temper, my novel in progress, the story of a chocolate candy business.

Weber's Triangle was selected by Maureen Corrigan on NPR/FRESH AIR as a favorite book of 2006 and was named by the Chicago Tribune as a Best Book of 2006.

Visit Katharine Weber's website and read an excerpt from Triangle.

The Page 99 Test: Triangle.

--Marshal Zeringue