Jane Smiley

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley sets her latest novel, Ten Days in the Hills in a fancy home high above Los Angeles. Sex, Hollywood, and soap opera-like personal drama give the novel a frenzied energy. But there’s another element the author adds into the mix. Kurt Andersen talks with Smiley about what inspired her to give the book the tense backdrop of March 2003, the earliest days of the war in Iraq.