Interview with Martin Zelder: Insights from Recovering Maurice

Author Martin Zelder makes a striking fiction debut with Recovering Maurice, a novel that blends intellectual curiosity with deep emotional vulnerability. Drawing on a background in academia and years of non-fiction writing, Zelder crafts a protagonist whose inner life is as restless as it is observant, navigating identity, disability, memory, and moral reckoning with unflinching honesty. In this interview, Zelder reflects on the unexpected moment that sparked the novel, the challenges of shifting from “telling” to “showing,” and the personal experiences that shaped Maurice’s voice. He also discusses literary influences, the weight of small everyday frustrations, and the redemptive possibilities he hopes readers carry with them long after the final page.

But first, who is Martin Zelder?

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Martin Zelder’s Books

• What first sparked the idea for Recovering Maurice?

I was taking a walk with my dog Serio, and we heard this amazing sound—described in the book as “a teeming, swelling, unfamiliar chirping”—which I later realized was the sound of thousands of mating frogs. When we heard this, I wondered what my dog was thinking about this.

• How much of your own background in academia and economics informed Maurice’s character and voice?

Maurice is definitely an unusual and intelligent fellow who even as a child observed the world with a kind of academic curiosity. He’s also an oddly compelling storyteller whom you could imagine connecting with students who realize that learning happens when you least expect it.

• The book deals with both visible and invisible disabilities, as well as long-term psychological wounds. What drew you to those themes, and how did you approach them with sensitivity and honesty?

As children, I think we all struggle to identify what fits with other kids’ expectations, as well as the extent to which our oddities are appreciated by other kids. So, I guess I think that one’s own child development is a feedback process where we learn how to conform but also how to individualize. Like Maurice, I grew up with a disabled sibling, from whom I learned a lot about tolerance, once I was mature enough to finally grasp the lessons.

• You’ve had a long career writing non-fiction and academic work. What was the biggest adjustment or surprise for you when shifting into fiction with this debut novel?

Standard advice for fiction writers is ‘show, don’t tell’. That advice, however, is in some sense diametrically opposed to what one tries to do in explaining social-scientific ideas. In that sort of academic writing, I always strove mightily to be clear to my readers—trying to be as clear a ‘teller’ as I could.

• The novel sometimes reads like a “fictional memoir,” intimate and introspective. Were there particular literary influences or books that shaped your approach to this narrative style?

Two profoundly great books—Melville’s Moby-Dick and John Gardner’s The Sunlight Dialogues—featured important characters who simply could not prevent their inner torments from being articulated and also acted upon, people who made their internal world external despite the consequences.

• Names and identity—down to the mispronunciation of Maurice’s surname—are a recurring thread. What do you think small, everyday frustrations like that reveal about a person’s inner life?

Awareness of these small and quotidian irritations naturally arises for people who are both keen noticers and also people with an overwhelming sense that wrongs should be righted.

• If you could sit Maurice down in your office for a candid conversation, what’s one hard truth you’d want him to hear—and one thing you’d like to thank him for?

I would want to beg Maurice not to make his emotions so readily evident to others, while at the same time celebrate how keenly he feels life at every turn.

• What part of Recovering Maurice was the hardest for you to write emotionally, and is there a scene you’re especially proud of crafting?

The hardest parts to write were those where Maurice was cruel to his brother Emil. I am especially proud of the dream sequence in the first chapter of Part IV, in part because it attempts to make amends for Maurice’s cruelty.

• For readers who may recognize some of their own pain or history in Maurice, what do you hope they carry with them after closing the final page?

An overriding motivation for me was to let readers know that others, like me, have felt the pain they’ve experienced, and that there is still the reality of a beautiful and redeeming world that any of us can find.

• What’s next for you as an author—are you staying in this introspective literary lane, or are there completely different stories you’re excited to explore?

I am interested in telling the story of how Maurice and his wife Lucia are transformed by investigating the life of Maurice’s grandfather Sam, a man of many secrets and perils, in that Sam was an immigrant kid abandoned by his father, but who then found a precarious identity in the world of Chicago organized crime during the time of Al Capone and beyond.