Johanna Skibsrud is the author of two collections of poetry. The Sentimentalists, her first novel, won the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's most prestigious literary award. She is also the author of a collection of short stories This Will Be Difficult To Explain. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Quartet for the End of Time is a brilliant work of art, and it is brilliant in so many ways - its dense, rich, and immaculate prose, its vivid evocation of a watershed period in American history, its high-stakes political and personal drama, and, above all, its intimate and completely compelling portraits of human beings struggling to do the right thing under ambiguous moral circumstances. This wholly realized book has everything I crave in a work of fiction. -- Tim O'Brien Intricate [and] ambitious ... a haunting meditation on responsibility with vivid glimpses of history, and a distinctive and nuanced voice. * Publishers Weekly * Skibsrud makes places and periods incredibly vivid, dancing through the 20th century and easily linking world events to the personal lives of her characters. * Emerald Street * Recalls Ian McEwan's Atonement ... it is exhilarating to join a novelist working at these bracing heights. * Washington Post * A searingly beautiful book, at once a sweeping historical epic and an intimate mediation on faith and memory ... so intelligent, so compassionate, so moving-and above all so gorgeously written-that it's impossible to put down. She is an astonishingly good writer. -- Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans