'To Name the Bigger Lie' is an investigation of the nature of truth
Sarah Viren's memoir, drawing from two life episodes, has the page-turning quality of a thriller. But instead of solving mysteries, she untangles philosophical tensions in pursuit of what is real.
In March 2020, Sarah Viren published an essay in The New York Times Magazine that arrested the attention of more than a million people.
In it, she told the story of how her wife Marta — like Viren, a professor at Arizona State University — was anonymously accused of sexually harassing female students in 2019. The Title IX complaints were part of a smear campaign against the couple from a man who was competing with Viren for a creative writing professorship at the University of Michigan. Viren and Marta quickly discovered that this was the truth — but they needed the facts to prove it.
The essay — which has now become part of her memoir is gripping in part because it combines a detective story with a
