Chloe Benjamin, “The Immortalists: A Novel”

In Conversation with Greg Changnon, Playwright and Former Book Club Columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? So begins The Immortalists – one of the year’s most talked about novels – appearing on virtually every “best of” list. It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The four Gold children sneak out to hear their fortunes.The prophecies they hear will inform their next five decades. At just 28 years old, novelist Benjamin has written a sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth that probes the line between destiny and choice in this world and the next.

Chloe Benjamin is the author of the novels, The Immortalists–a #1 Indie Next Pick, #1 LibraryReads Pick and Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection–and The Anatomy of Dreams, which received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. A San Francisco native, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and of the University of Wisconsin, where she received her MFA in fiction. She lives with her husband in Madison, Wisconsin.