In Search of Truth: An Interview with Helen Epstein

We asked the writer Helen Epstein for an interview about the relation between her work as a writer and the 20th century’s traumas — ‘literati facing wars, revolutions, regimes’. Her experience reveals a deep bond between one’s self, one’s personal experience, and the choice of dealing with particular themes. It helps provide an answer to one of the leading questions of the research about Humenities and the Historical and Cultural Context of the XXth century: can the researcher’s and scholar’s approach be objective and fruitful in spite of ‘wars, revolutions, regimes’? Yes, it can, so long as the scope and boundaries of her/his activity, depending on both inner and external conditions, is acknowledged.