Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene. Her first novel, "Strangers on a Train", has been adapted for
Edith's Diary been described as "one of [Highsmith's] bleakest" novels, that "presents a narrative of a woman's life that offers no redemptive possibilities and is portrayed instead as a slow but unremitting descent into madness". "Edith's Diary" was adapted into the German film "" (1983), directed by Hans W. Geißendörfer and starring Angela Winkler as Edith. Highsmith called the film "dreadful" and said: "Making the son in love with the mother is a lot of Oedipal crap." Edith's Diary Edith's Diary (1977) is a psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, the seventeenth of her 22 novels. It was first published in the