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The Lotus Eaters

by Tatjana Soli (Goodreads Author)

3.82 of 5 stars 3.82 · rating details · 5,336 ratings · 1,059 reviews

- Winner of UK's James Tait Black Prize
- New York Times Notable Book of 2010
- American Library Association 2011 Notable Book
- Finalist LA Times Book Award
- A Kirkus Reviews Top Debut Fiction of 2010
- Bookmarks Magazine Best Literary Fiction of 2010

In the final days of a falling Saigon, The Lotus Eaters unfolds the story of three remarkable photographers brought togeth...more

Paperback, 416 pages

Published December 21st 2010 by St. Martin's Griffin (first published 2010)

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Oct 02, 2011 Staci rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Staci by: TLC Tour Book

Shelves: 2011-reads, tlc-tour-2011

My thoughts:
This one punched me deep in my gut....I literally sobbed for 15 minutes after I finished the last page. All of these emotions were swirling within my chest and brain and I needed to release them with a good cry. I am just beginning to understand why my two uncles that served in Vietnam never spoke of their experience. Who would want to revisit those horrors, to have those images dredged up again, to make them real once more? I felt shell-shocked and wounded deep in my soul by the evi...more

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Sep 17, 2010 Jeanette rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, asia, five-star-fiction

Wow! Can this really be Tatjana Soli's first novel? She pierces right through all the bullshit about war in general and the Vietnam debacle in particular. I've learned to steer clear of most novels about Vietnam because there's usually too much of the macho jungle combat detail. I'm glad I made an exception for The Lotus Eaters. Written by a woman about a woman---a photographer who shows up in Vietnam in 1965 with no idea what she's doing or how it will change her life.
I'm glad I stayed with th...more

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May 01, 2011 Jeffrey Crimmel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Finished the Lotus Eaters on May 1. This is a great account of that war that made headlines and dominated the lives of my generation from the late 60s to the late 70s. While I was traveling around the world and living the story of my book, Living Beneath the Radar, I arrived in Bangkok the day the last helicopters pulled out of Saigon, in Vietnam. The author takes the present day reader back to that country leading up to the dramatic end and the chaos that existed in the neighboring countries of...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Vivian Valvano rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having spent many years of my youth angry about and sad about what I consider the USA's utter folly in fighting in Vietnam for so many years (which is NOT, in any way, to be taken as a negative statement about the brave military and medical personnel that served there; my anger is at the government, and I am still angry at what I believe is a lack of care and attention to the Vietnam veterans; I did what I could to speak out protest the war and, when I was old enough, vote accordingly), I've rea...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Tasha rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bee-bookshelf, historical-fiction, ww2-stories

update 9/26/11 as I keep thinking about this rating, it just keeps nagging at me. It is not really a 4 star read, for me. I am bumping it down to a 3. I guess it says something about the book that I am struggling with this rating, even days later. But there it is: a 3 star rating.

This is a hard one for me to review. Basically, I'd rate it a 3.5 stars but since i can't, I'll bump it up to 4 stars. For most of the story, I was turned off by the focus of a love story/triangle. I went into the book...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Kristen Carannante rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel is a retrospective look at the lives of American photojournalists during the Vietnam War. I liked the format, starting with a very agitating not-quite ending of the story, and then looking back on all that occurred leading up to that ending. It is a graphic description of the horrors of war interspersed with heart-wrenching acts of humanity.

Shown through the eyes of three different characters: Helen, one of few women photojournalists in Vietnam, young and inexperienced; Sam, a dark,...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Bill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites

This was a very strong novel of the war in Vietnam. It was intense, it was vivid, and it was what the real war was like both to the young American soldiers and to the people of Vietnam. Helen, as the combat photog, was slowly caught up in the war until it became part of her, part of her reason for being. Darrow was the lure that dragged her into the intensity of life and the daily struggle with death that was the life of the people. Linh was always there in the background seeming detached from w...more

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Nov 19, 2011 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Tatjana Soli's The Lotus Eaters is a really marvelous novel--both lush and beautiful but also brutal and heart-wrenching. As much as I got caught up in the story and wanted to keep reading, I found I could only mange it in small doses. The story follows a young American woman who travels to Vietnam in 1963 to work as a photojournalist and gets so caught up in the war she remains until the bitter end.

I've read very little about the Vietnam War save Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, but I al...more Tatjana Soli's The Lotus Eaters is a really marvelous novel--both lush and beautiful but also brutal and heart-wrenching. As much as I got caught up in the story and wanted to keep reading, I found I could only mange it in small doses. The story follows a young American woman who travels to Vietnam in 1963 to work as a photojournalist and gets so caught up in the war she remains until the bitter end.

I've read very little about the Vietnam War save Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, but I always have this expectation that reading about it will be so uncomfortable that it will be too disturbing to stick it out. Unlike reading about wars from the distant past, this one is almost just within grasp of (my) living memory, which somehow makes it harder read about. However, with two novels now under my belt I am curious to read and learn more. Although there are some distressing scenes in The Lotus Eaters, by and large there is nothing overly graphic in it. What made it slow going for me was that it was so often emotionally draining--not only just reading about a war and its effects on the soldiers and Vietnamese population but also about the inner turmoil that Helen Adams suffers throughout the course of the story.

The novel opens at the end of the war during the fall of Saigon in 1975 as the Americans are pulling out of the country. The city is in total disarray and there is a lawless mentality amongst the people, so many of whom are trying to get out before the Communists finally take over. It's obvious that Helen is war weary yet she is also obsessed with getting those final photographs of the handover as well as being the last American woman reporter in Vietnam. She no longer fears death, as the war has taken that away from her. What she fears is the possibility of failure. Her entire world has become the war and Vietnam, she believes she knows nothing else and has nothing else to go home to.

Moving back in time to 1963 and the beginning of the story--or at least Helen's beginning--the reader sees what steps led to that moment. Helen arrives in Saigon with much optimism and naivety and practically no experience. She's driven to go to the war to understand what happened to her brother who died in Vietnam, even dropping out of college as she thought it would be over before she had a chance to make her mark. She has little knowledge of what makes a good photo and her first foray into combat is a disaster. She's befriended, though perhaps seduced is a better word, by Sam Darrow who has made a name for himself through his famous photos. They embark on a passionate affair that becomes as all-consuming for them both as is their desire to photograph the war.

Over time, and Helen remains in the country for the duration, she becomes a seasoned photojournalist and perhaps something of a novelty for being one of the few (the only in this story) women reporters in Vietnam. Not just satisfied with going out on the approved, and mostly safe, press junkets she seeks out the more dangerous combat missions, which help her earn her a fierce reputation. Jaded by years in the field (jokingly he says the cool thing is that there is always another war around the corner) Sam is ambivalent about his work yet he cannot pull himself away from it. He sends his assistant, Linh, a former soldier-turned photographer to help Helen and look out for her, creating a complicated love triangle. For all three the war is not only their making but their undoing as well.

I wondered as I read the story about what motivates a photojournalist to put him/herself into the most dangerous situations in order to record these world events. For Helen and Sam there was an adrenaline rush feeling of getting just the perfect shot that would make the cover of a magazine or win a Pulitzer, though I think there has to be something more to it as well. It seems such a fine line to walk between documenting such suffering and exploiting it. At what point does idealism turn into something darker.

I thought Soli did a good job not only asking these questions but balancing them, as well showing how destructive is war (no matter with what initial good intentions) and how it leads to corruption but at the same time not passing judgment either. This was an intensely visual book and it had an almost cinematic quality to it. I can almost imagine it being made into a movie as Soli's descriptions were so vivid. Although not without a few flaws, I was very impressed by the story.(less)

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May 05, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction

A beautifully written book about a female photo journalist in Vietnam during the early phases and end of the Vietnam war. Ticks and flaws in the author’s writing style drove me batty at time, but the lush prose and engaging story line kept drawing me back in. Well worth the read.

**Spoilerish Comments**

The story begins with the fall of Saigon. Linda and her Vietnamese husband Linh struggle to reach the American Embassy for evacuation. Linh is suffering from an infection caused by a bullet wound...more A beautifully written book about a female photo journalist in Vietnam during the early phases and end of the Vietnam war. Ticks and flaws in the author’s writing style drove me batty at time, but the lush prose and engaging story line kept drawing me back in. Well worth the read.

**Spoilerish Comments**

The story begins with the fall of Saigon. Linda and her Vietnamese husband Linh struggle to reach the American Embassy for evacuation. Linh is suffering from an infection caused by a bullet wound and is on the brink of passing out or passing away. Linda uses her fame as Life magazine photographer to get him on one of the last helicopters out but refuses to go with him because she believes she has another story left to tell and stays to cover the fall. The story then jumps back to when she first arrives in Vietnam as an aspiring photojournalist hoping to uncover the truth about her younger brother’s death in Vietnam.

The prose in the story was gorgeous. As a reader, I felt immersed in the landscape, sights and sounds of Vietnam. The development of the relationship with Darrow and later Linh unfolded well. One a charismatic, exciting love; the other a deeper, mature love. Linda’s emotional development and trajectory throughout the book spoke volumes about love, war, and even photography. The brief love scenes were sensual without provoking giggles or groans (as romance novels often do for me).

On the negative side, I found the story’s chronology and multiple story lines distracting. Beginning the story with the fall and then jumping back in time decreased narrative tension around several story lines. The flash forward at the beginning revealed the nature of her relationship with Linh and with Darrow, thus when the story goes back to earlier in the war knowing about those relationships affects the way we view those characters instead of creating suspense or surprise.

The inconsistent point of view also drove me crazy. I’d be reading a passage from one character’s point of view when it would suddenly switch to a different minor character.

At times I also thought there were too many themes such as Linda’s relationship with her dead father and brother, the men in her life, the war, and photography. It was until the end that they tied together - but they did.

Overall a wonderful book that I hope to read again. (less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Patty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended by a friend recently returned from modern day Vietnam, the Lotus Eaters plunges readers back to when that nation was at war—with itself and with the Americans, many of whom wondered why they were there. The protagonists are Helen, determined to make her mark as a female war photographer, in part to make sense of her brother's death in the war and the two men she becomes romantically involved with—Sam Darrow, the married prototypical Life war photographer and the mysterious Linh, the...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Louise rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

Story Description:

St. Martin’s Press|December 21, 2010|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-312-67444-1

In the final days of a falling Saigon, The Lotus Eaters unfolds the story of three remarkable photographers brought together under the impossible umbrella of war: Helen Adams, a once-naïve ingénue whose ambition conflicts with her desire over the course of the fighting: Linh, the mysterious Vietnamese man who loves her, but is torn between conflicting loyalties to his homeland and his heart; and Sam Dar...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Vinod Peris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a weakness for historical fiction. A novel that blends some agonizing period in history, which is typically associated with war, with an element of romance thrown in, seems the perfect formula for education and entertainment. The Invisible Bridge is a similar novel that was set in Hungary during WW2, that I loved as well.

In her debut novel, Tatjana jumps in with both feet into war torn Vietnam and chronicles the events that unfold through the eyes of the photo-journalists Helen, Darrow an...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had such high hopes for this book. Basically it’s the story of a young woman combat photographer in Vietnam towards the end of the war, Helen Adams, and the two men she loves – Sam Darrow (a seasoned photographer who has a reputation), and Linh (the Vietnamese man who is Darrow’s and then Helen’s assistant).

I didn’t find anything about the relationships believable. I didn’t feel the passion or tenderness or compassion or love between any of them. The mark of good writing is that the author wil...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book follows Helen Adams, a photographer who goes off to Vietnam near the start of the war. Soli does a great job, in my opinion, of showing the change in Adams as she lives and works in Vietnam for twelve years. The author also explores many other personalities of war through the other journalists there, the soldiers Adams goes into battle with, and the Vietnamese people. During her time there Adams has two love affairs, one with an already famous photographer, and then later with his Viet...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Jean Nicolazzo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jean by: Shira

Helen Adams is a young college dropout from Los Angeles who makes her way to Vietnam in the mid-1960's to try to flesh out the details behind the Marines' opaque explanation of her brother's death in combat. To gain access to the action, she joins the press corp as a photographer, and thus becomes both witness and participant in the absurdity and horror that characterized the American adventure in that country's civil war. "Sudden and sublime. Sudden and awful. Everything distilled to its most i...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Love and war, a popular combination in novels, some may say it’s a combination that is overdone. The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli however provides readers with a slightly different and revitalizing angle on the topic. The novel opens in April 1975 as the Americans are fleeing Vietnam. Helen Adams, a young woman compelled to get o Vietnam after her brother is killed in action, arrives in Vietnam as an unseasoned war photographer. Before long Helen is photographing combat, learning the language an...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Shawn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Ever

I enjoyed The Lotus Eaters very much. The author, Tatjana Soli, has gone beyond the limits of War genre, or Thriller genre, and she has succeeded in leading her readers to that place where we can look at our shared truth about today's global society. Soli illustrates woman's search for her place on Earth, and she uses captivating descriptions of Home versus Foreign. In one example, she returns to a foreign land and describes the smell, the green, the humidity, the heat that hits you like a bat,...more

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Sep 12, 2011 Marie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

GREAT book. It's 1965 and Helen is a college dropout who's been obsessed w/ the Vietnam war since her brother was killed there, and shows up in Vietnam as a novice freelance photographer. She is a 'scared california girl' who is instantly the butt of many of the other photographers' (almost all male) jokes. With her quick wit and sarcasm she befriends the legendary Sam Darrow. He has been photographing wars for decades and is known for his fanatic behaviors and obsession w/ war. Along with Darro...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Brynne Betz rated it 5 of 5 stars

There's a hard, dark stone deep within each of us, buried beneath flesh and muscle and gut. Its parched. Thirsty for release. For within its walls it carries memories, pains, struggles and fears. Out of harms way we tucked it. Or so we thought. But slowly it poisons us. From the inside out.

Until we let ourselves be saved. Saved by the gift of an artist's daring.

Tatjana Soli watered my hard, dark stone, transforming its cruel shell to a soft and mushy pulp. She reminded me that the darkness insid...more

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May 04, 2011 Sara added it · review of another edition

THE LOTUS EATERS: A NOVEL by Tatjana Soli. St. Martin’s Press, 2010. 400. 9780312611576.

With only a high school photography class as experience, Helen Adams becomes a combat photojournalist to understand details of her brother’s death in Vietnam. In 1967, as the only woman photographer in Vietnam, she is hired to capture human interest stories. She quickly meets Darrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who is addicted to capturing the next cover shot, and convinces him to get her on com...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The tragedy of the Vietnam War never ceases to stagger--this novel spans ten years, flashing back from the American surrender of Saigon in April 1975 to explore the intertwined fates of two Americans and their Vietnamese interpreter. Comprising a romantic triangle are Sam Darrow, a glamorous, jaded, 40ish photographer; Helen Adams, an aspiring neophyte photographer in her early twenties when she arrives to cover the war; and Linh, the son of intelligentsia from the North, whose initial goal is t...more

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Mar 02, 2011 TheGirlBytheSeaofCortez rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-authors, contemporary-authors, literary-fiction, stories-in-war-time

The Lotus Eaters, Tatjana Soli’s debut novel, is quite impressive, but not without its faults. It revolves around neophyte photojournalist, Helen Adams, who we first meet in 1975 in Saigon as the North Vietnamese begin to roll through the city, and the city falls. I guess I shouldn’t call Adams a neophyte photojournalist because she arrived in Vietnam in 1965, an idealistic California girl, fresh out of college, her only previous encounter with war being her father’s tales of fighting in the Kor...more

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Jan 23, 2011 Bookworm rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started reading The Lotus Eaters at around 10 o'clock one night after I settled into bed figuring I'd wind down my day with about 20 minutes of reading, instead I read for the next two hours unable to put down this intriguing book.

The Lotus Eaters opens up with thirty something American journalist and photographer Helen Adams living in Vietnam. It is 1975 and a war torn Saigon is falling.
Linh is the Vietnamese man who is the love of Helen's life, he too is a photographer.
Sam Darrow is an Ameri...more

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Nov 10, 2010 Bedford Library rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: judy-staff-picks

Much like the Vietnam War itself, this title both repels and draws the reader. Soli’s lyrical prose allows us to see the beauty, the tawdriness, and the devastation that was Saigon at the end of the war. Without skirting the violence of the war, debut novelist Soli captures her audience by offering us an intimate story that revolves around three people. Helen Adams is one of the first women photographers in Vietnam who actually goes on patrol with combat troops. She soon falls in love with the m...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Meredith Morgan added it · review of another edition

The first chapter of this novel grabbed me and promised an incomparable story. The rest of the novel never quite fulfilled that promise, but it was a riveting story about love and obsession in the midst the Vietnam war. For the most part it was beautifully written. While the theme might not be highly original, I found the treatment to be engaging and the characters compelling.

Helen Adams is one of the first female photojournalists in Vietnam during the mid-sixties. She went to Vietnam following...more

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Aug 15, 2010 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Lotus Eaters" is the first novel for the author, Tatjana Soli. The title refers to a passage in Homer's "Odyssey", which the author quotes at the outset of the book and it serves as an appropriate metaphor for the photojournalists of the Vietnam War or any war.
The book's cover doesn't do justice to the story.
Watching the Vietnam War from our living rooms and looking at the photos plastered almost daily in magazines and newspapers, you began to wonder who could watch the events, take the ph...more

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Apr 04, 2010 Literary Feline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I watched the film The Hurt Locker recently. I have had difficulty putting my thoughts onto paper about it and so you haven't seen a review. One thing in particular that stood out for me, however, was the scene where Staff Sergeant James is grocery shopping, followed by a scene of him trying to talk to his wife about his experiences in the Iraq War as she prepares a meal. These are very revealing scenes. The soldier goes from intense and life threatening situations in Iraq to the every day monot...more I watched the film The Hurt Locker recently. I have had difficulty putting my thoughts onto paper about it and so you haven't seen a review. One thing in particular that stood out for me, however, was the scene where Staff Sergeant James is grocery shopping, followed by a scene of him trying to talk to his wife about his experiences in the Iraq War as she prepares a meal. These are very revealing scenes. The soldier goes from intense and life threatening situations in Iraq to the every day monotony of life back home. His wife is not able to understand what he has been through, everything he has seen.

The violence and shared horrors, the adrenalin rush, the camaraderie and strong bonds that form between the soldiers, and the sense of duty and honor . . . War can change a person. It can make adjusting to home life upon return difficult. It is not uncommon for soldiers to return to battle even when they don't have to. Some feel most comfortable there in a way many of us who haven't experienced it can't even begin to understand. I thought of this as I read The Lotus Eaters. A different war, a different time period. A novel about photojournalists rather than a movie about soldiers. The pull of war, of danger, seduces some almost like a drug. It makes the title of Tatjana Soli's novel all the more fitting.

I was drawn to Soli's The Lotus Eaters because of the setting. The novel is set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It is the story of an American female photojournalist, Helen Adams, who is set on following in her father and brother's footsteps, wanting to know how her brother died and to experience some of what he must have as a soldier in the Vietnam War. It is also the story of Linh, a Vietnamese man who has lost everything and who is doing what he can to survive. And then there is Sam Darrow, an American photojournalist whose entire life is wrapped up in shooting wars.

The novel opens as Helen is making her way home to her apartment in Saigon where Linh, bedridden and in need of medical care, is waiting. The Americans are fleeing the city as the Communists take over, the final sign of a war lost. Helen struggles with whether to leave with Linh or stay to see the changeover first hand, capturing it on film. Her decision made, the novel, and her thoughts, shift to the past and the reader is taken to the moment she first arrived in Saigon and from there her story and that of Linh's and Darrow's unfold.

I fell in love with this novel from the very first word. My biggest regret is that I read the novel without my reading journal handy and so my notes are few, and I don't have a record of the many quotations that especially moved me. The author's writing is beautiful. There was a melancholy and underlying tension about it which helped to create the tone of the novel. None of the characters in the novel are perfect, each one flawed and multi-faceted. They are tormented but driven, eager but at times reluctant.

Helen changes quite a bit during her time in Vietnam. She arrives as a naive young woman, eager to make a name for herself and prove she can hold her own in a man's world. She has her work cut out for her and, even at her most fearful, she is courageous. As the novel progresses, Helen grows stronger and wiser but there is a recklessness there too, much like that of veteran photographer, Darrow, who finds comfort and meaning in war. He sees something in Helen, a hint himself in his younger years, but also someone who may finally be his match.

Linh's story intrigued me. He is Darrow's assistant and proves to be an invaluable companion. He is the biggest mystery of all throughout the novel, but as his personal story unfolds, I was even more drawn to him, and I couldn't help but wish I had known him in real life.

Through the author's words and the characters' eyes, I could understand their love/hate relationship with Vietnam. It is a beautiful country. The Vietnamese people were tenacious and adaptable. They had to be given the circumstances of the country's history. The author's knowledge and interest in Vietnam shined through on every page. She included a bibliography at the end of the book for those interested in reading more about the country. While her story is fiction, there is truth woven in. Soli did not take sides but presented a realistic and complicated picture of events in Vietnam at the time.

The Lotus Eaters is beautiful, dark, and thought provoking. War is cruel and Soli does not hold back from sharing the ugly side of it. Within it too, however, are sparks of humanity and compassion. The author does not leave that out either. In fact, it is often those moments, that help Helen through the darker moments. The Lotus Eaters is an amazing novel: a love story just as much as it is about the Vietnam War and the impact war can have on those touched by it. After having just finished it, I am still hesitant to pick up another book, still caught in its spell.

Source: Book provided by publisher for review.(less)

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Feb 17, 2012 Charlotte rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While I lived through the Vietnam War years, recently becoming acquainted with a Vietnam veteran, and hearing of some of his experiences has made me realize how detatched I was to that war, not withstanding the death counts that were reported on the nightly news. My brother didn't go. My ex-husband didn't go. I had no close friends there. So when I noticed this book in the audiobook collection of the library, I decided to check it out. The main character of the book is Helen, who chose to go to...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Tina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: culture-study, educational, historical-insights, life-examined

This book addresses to the deepest extent the questions some of us ponder about war correspondents: how are they able to capture such tragic moments without engaging (as it seems) and most importantly – WHY do they put themselves through this psychological torture? This book examines all possible answers to these questions and more…

I think, “The Lotus Eaters” should be on every high school reading list – to nip any illusions about wars in the bud, to familiarize our youth with such intimate and...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Currer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-novel, war-vietnam, women-s-experience, jungles

This book does a stylistic thing I hate—switching POV constantly between paragraphs, or even sometimes between sentences. The writing awkward in other ways too, though occasionally very beautiful. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and would absolutely recommend it.

The story drew me in, and I really appreciated what seemed to me the goals of the novel: to get inside the Vietnam War from a woman’s perspective (including what may be the first fictional description I’ve read of a woman’s...more

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About Tatjana Soli

Tatjana Soli is a novelist and short story writer. Her bestselling debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, winner of the James Tait Black Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and finalist for the LA Times Book Award among other honors. Her stories have appeared in Boulevard, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Third Coast, Sonora Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. Her wo...more

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“Why did someone fall in love with you because you are one thing and then want you to be something else?” — 12 people liked it

“The hardest thing was to give meaning to what appeared to have none.” — 9 people liked it

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