The Lifetime original Girl in the Basement is based on the true story of Josef and Elisabeth Fritzl, which also partly inspired the Oscar-winning film Room.
Last modified on Sat 8 May 2021 08.07 EDT
I got the notion to write
Room in 2008 when I was driving to a book event and mulling over a news story from a few days before about a five-year-old called Felix Fritzl, rescued from the Austrian dungeon where his mother had raised him and his siblings. By the time I parked, and grabbed a napkin to scribble down my thoughts, I knew my novel had to be from the childâs point of view, would begin on his fifth birthday and be split into two halves by the escape, and would be called (in an echo of