Adelia Saunders On How Her Adventures In Archives Shaped “Indelible”

Adelia Saunders’ Indelible centers around Magda, a young Lithuanian woman who possesses a burdensome ability: she’s able to read the major and minor events of people’s lives on their skin. She copes by not wearing her glasses (rendering her barely able to see at all), but she’s jolted out of her routine when she reads her own name on the face of Neil, a young American graduate student studying abroad in Paris. Meanwhile, Neil’s father Richard has also traveled to Paris to research the life history of his mother, a prolific and influential author who abandoned him as a toddler. As the novel progresses, Saunders deftly reveals the different secrets that comprise all three characters’ lives and shows how they are inextricably linked. Adelia Saunders spoke to Brendan Dowling via telephone on October 19th, 2016.