Larissa MacFarquhar

IN A NUTSHELL

What if we all felt obliged to help everyone we could? 

ABOUT LARISSA

As a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998, Larissa MacFarquhar has written profiles on subjects ranging from Noam Chomsky to Barack Obama to Quentin Tarantino. Her recent book, Strangers Drowning, explores the lives of extreme altruists, and confronts the resistance and unease they can provoke in the rest of us. These are people who donated one of their kidneys to save the life of a stranger, a couple who adopted twenty children, and individuals who give away more than half their salaries. With these intimate portraits, the London-born writer challenges us to consider whether such people should seem as extraordinary to us as they do.   

LEARN MORE

Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help 
MacFarquhar L. Penguin Press. 2015.  

Larissa MacFarquhar interview: 'People think I'm a total freak for not using the first person' 
Wolf D. The Guardian. 2015.  

Extreme altruism: should you care for strangers at the expense of your family? 
MacFarquhar L. The Guardian. 2015.   

The Children of Strangers 
MacFarquhar L. The New Yorker. 2015.  

An Evening at the Moth: Larissa MacFarquhar 
MacFarquhar L. The Moth. 2015.  

Lives of the Moral Saints 
Johnson DV. Boston Review. 2013.   

Larissa MacFarquhar's New Yorker articles