Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie (1926–2020) was an American novelist and academic who taught at Cornell University for more than thirty years. Her satirical novels of academic life, notably Foreign Affairs and Love and Friendship, dissected the pretensions of professors, wives and exiles with witty, precise observations.

Lurie won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Foreign Affairs. A scholar of folk and children's literature as much as a novelist, she wrote widely on children's books, and her combination of social comedy with genuine moral attention earned her the acclaim of both critics and generations of readers.