SOURCE: Ozick, Cynthia, and Mario Materassi. “Imagination Unbound: An Interview with Cynthia Ozick.” Salmagundi, nos. 94–95 (spring–summer 1992): 85–113.

In the following interview, Ozick comments on her writing career and the influences behind The Messiah of Stockholm.

[Materassi:] Let's begin with a standard “first question”: How and when did you become a writer?

[Ozick:] This question is really very easy for me, because I never was not a writer. I think I knew this very, very early, before I could even hold a pen. Partly it was simply instinct, and partly I had a model: there was a writer in my family, my mother's brother, who died a few years ago. He was a Hebrew poet.

What was his name?

His name was Abraham Regelson. He emigrated to Israel when that state declared its independence in 1948. And though he won a number of major prizes there, his star is very...