Susan Sontag

Writer Susan Sontag died Wednesday at age 71 of leukemia. We listen back to two interviews with her: a 1989 conversation about her book AIDS and Its Metaphors; and 1993 interview conducted shortly after Sontag returned from Sarajevo, where she directed a performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Serbo-Croatian.

Writer and director Susan Sontag. Sontag is just back from Sarajevo, where she has been directing a performance of Beckett's "Waiting For Godot" in the Serbo-Croatian language. She is one of few arts figures to visit the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a battle she calls "the Spanish Civil War of our time". Her latest novel is the "Volcano Lover," recently published in paperback by Anchor Books. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Sontag's new historical novel "The Volcano Lover: A Romance," is a well-reviewed, best-selling book. She's best known for her intellectually rigorous essayists.

Nunez's latest novel, What Are You Going Through, is about facing the possible death of our planet from climate change — while also dealing with our mortality as individuals.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947 – 1963, the newly published intimate ruminations of Susan Sontag.

Diagnosed with cancer for the third time, Susan Sontag signed on for a harsh treatment regimen in hopes it would keep her alive. But it only added to her suffering. Her son, journalist David Rieff, has published a memoir about his mother's "revolt against death."