Skip to content

Cass R. Sunstein, "They Are and Were There", Soc. Res., Fall 2018, at 687 (reviewing A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance).


Abstract: How well can anyone know a historical figure? How well can one person know another? What really matters? This essay explores those questions with reference to A.S. Byatt's masterpiece, Possession. A novel or a romance will not give crisp answers to such questions, but Byatt's answers, at once life-affirming and heartbreaking, are the right ones.