Liza Wieland is the Robert Penn Warren Prize and Pushcart Prize award-winning author of ten books, including the latest, The Journal of Djuna Malik. She is the Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at East Carolina University.

The Journal of
Djuna Malik

Since the death of their parents in Mumbai in 2008, Nisha Malik has been the primary caretaker of her sister Djuna. Their lives in rural eastern North Carolina have not always been easy, but together with Nisha’s American husband Michael, they’ve built a community for themselves.

Then, Djuna began her first year at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she lived off campus with two housemates—next door to an angry and dangerous young man. In the aftermath of her sister’s murder, Nisha learns that Djuna left behind a journal she kept for class. This journal becomes the center of a dispute between Nisha and Djuna’s English professor, an Irish writer desperate for material. In the course of their meetings and negotiations, they reveal a great deal to each other about their cultures, their families and their pasts.

Daniel Wallace

Author, Big Fish

“In all her novels, Wieland gets at the heart of her characters with subtle precision and compelling compassion. The Journal of Djuna Malik is no exception. A searing story of grief in multiples, this narrative of sisters, a flailing son and senseless violence portrays living for what it is: a moment-to-moment enterprise, shot through with negotiation, regret, hauntings and wonder.”

Kat Meads

Author, These Particular Women

“A novel of big themes, and “Wieland explores them with psychological nuance and exactitude in prose that sometimes has a lyrical stillness and other times opens out into harsh, raw feeling (When tragedy strikes, Nisha’s “wailing afterwards was so loud and so long it seemed the sound came from the hospital building, out of the walls and floors, the drywall, the pipes, the wiring, the invisible Internet signal”). Wieland handles this sometimes unbearably dark material with evocative writing that packs an emotional wallop. A harrowing tale of loss and remembrance, often bleak but also lit with a hard-earned wisdom and grace.”

Kirkus Review