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From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm very happy to have us my guest, Vendalavida.

Her new book is The Lovers.

It's the story of a recently widowed middle-aged woman

who revisits the scene of her honeymoon, a small town on Turkey's coast, and finds herself on a

journey of self-discovery. Vendelavita is one of the very few writers who has been on the show for

each of her books, because each time I read a book by Vendelavita,

I say, my, how mysterious, how moving,

how extraordinarily strange,

and all over again.

There it is, her new book, The Lovers, from Echo Books. It's a division of Harper.

And I'm just astonished because the books seem to have the theme of mystery. How does your life manage to introduce you at a certain point to yourself?

The characters in each of your three books find themselves learning that they don't know who they are and going through something like a mystical experience in order to find out.

Vandler, is this a new genre?

Have you intended it?

It's an extraordinary thing.

Well, that's why I always like being on your show, Michael, because you can tell me what my books are about.

I don't intend to write any sort of book when I set out.

I start with a location and a character, and I think it's probably very natural that the characters in one's novels

tend to undergo the same sort of quests, even subconsciously as a writer. You force them to undergo

similar quests for identity and for self and for understanding. But especially with these

...