Fiction. African American Studies. ANNA IN-BETWEEN is Elizabeth Nunez's finest literary achievement to date. In spare prose, with laserlike attention to every word and the juxtaposition of words to each other, Nunez returns to themes of emotional alienation, within the context of class and color discrimination, so richly developed in her earlier novels. Anna, the novel's main character, who has a successful publishing career in the United States, is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on vacation in the island home of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go to the United States for treatment, even though it is, perhaps, her only chance of survival. Anna and her father, who tries to remain respectful of his wife's wishes, must convince her to change her mind.

Author Hometown: BROOKLYN, NY USA



About the author: Elizabeth Nunez is the award-winning author of seven novels, most recently BOUNDARIES and ANNA IN- BETWEEN, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was selected for the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is a distinguished professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches writing and fiction.

Reviews:
Amy Finnerty in the NY Times Book Review
Emma Hamilton in Bust magazine
author site