“I love the novel of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful novel. I love the movie of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful movie. And they're totally different. You accept each on its own terms, and that's kind of the ideal.”

Israeli-American novelist and essayist

Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist known for her mystery fiction and personal writing. She wrote The Mommy-Track Mysteries, a seven-book mystery series, along with four other novels. Waldman also wrote autobiographical essays about motherhood. She spent three years as a federal public defender, and that experience often informs her fiction, especially the legal and everyday pressures that shape her characters.