If you read Idra Novey’s new novel, Those Who Knew, a year or two from now, you might think she was inspired to write it by watching everything that transpired during the recent hearings and investigation surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court.
But the novel was finished long before Kavanaugh was in the public eye. The book centers around Lena, a woman in an unnamed island country, as she watches the rise of a populist politician who had physically abused her years before.
In light of the Kavanaugh hearings, Novey considers the very similar situation the protagonist of her new novel confronts.
She says, "When I was working on this novel I wondered if the level of hypocrisy that I was creating in this fictional world would not resonate, perhaps, with readers who might think that it was implausible for someone to get away with crimes in open view, this way. And then all of a sudden it seemed like everything that I imagined was actually happening in my own country just escalated 100 times."
Novey also authored an essay on the silence of sexual assault in literature.
Discussing the experience described in her book, she says: "Swallowing an experience, especially when it’s by a powerful person who becomes a powerful politician in your country … it is this inner roar that you hear that nobody else hears. It’s like you have this tornado inside you."
