Messud's debut novel, "When The World Was Steady" (1995), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 1999, she published her second book, "The Last Life", about three generations of a French-Algerian family. Her 2001 work, "The Hunters", consists of two novellas. "The Emperor's Children", which Messud wrote while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005, was critically praised and became a "New York Times" bestseller, as well as being longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, Messud published her sixth novel, "The Woman Upstairs". Her 2017 novel, "The Burning Girl," was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times and others.