Donna Tartt

Donna Louise Tartt is an American writer and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the novel The Goldfinch.

She was born in Greenwood, located in the Mississippi Delta, on December 23, 1963. Soon afterward, her parents, Don and Taylor Tartt, moved to another city in the state, Grenada. Donna’s literary talent emerged very early: at the age of five the girl wrote her first poem, and at 13 her poems were published in the Mississippi literary review.

Her inclination toward literary creativity also determined her choice of profession: in 1981 Donna began studying classical philology at the University of Mississippi. She was an active member of student societies, in particular the well-known sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, and also wrote a great deal. In 1982 Donna transferred to Bennington College in Vermont, which specializes in educating “free artists.” Her classmates included future celebrities such as Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt, whose friendship the writer has maintained to this day.

In 1984, while in her second year of college, Donna began writing a novel. The setting of the work coincided with the reality surrounding her: a college, students studying classical antiquity, and a close circle of wealthy, intellectual, and uninhibited student friends. Initially the novel was called God of Illusions, but in the end the book received the seemingly unpretentious title The Secret History. It should be noted that this title is ambiguous: the same title, in the original Historia Arcana, belongs to an outstanding historical work describing the tragic events of the Byzantine Empire, which are surprisingly refracted in the life of a contemporary group of students. Beneath the external literalness and modesty of the title, layers of history and psychological depth are revealed. The book can be read as a detective story, a psychological novel, or a historical and literary essay, although its main content is perhaps the dissection of the human soul and an analysis of its destruction by irresponsibility, selfishness, and pride.

Work on the book lasted a very long time: The Secret History was published only in 1992 and made a sensation. Sales of the novel reached an enormous 75