From Madame Bovary to Hedda Gabler, some of literature’s most passionate heroines find themselves under the fire of their times. In Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, the Irish novelist took on nothing less than the mother of Christ. In his masterful new novel, Nora Webster, he portrays a fiercely compelling young Irish widow and mother of four navigating grief and fear and struggling for hope. Rachel Kushner (The Flamethrowers) joins Tóibín for a discussion about creating characters that erupt off the page in novels where the political and the personal are locked in a deep and fascinating embrace.