Jonathan Franzen

Con esta historia inmisericorde de una típica familia norteamericana, Jonathan Franzen obtuvo el National Book Award y el Premio James Tait Black Memorial, y fue finalista de los premios Pulitzer y Pen/Faulkner. De este meticuloso retrato de los Lambert emergen de forma brillante y profundamente humana las angustias y contradicciones de toda una sociedad, la norteamericana, y de una epoca, la ultima decada del siglo XX. Alfred Lambert es un ingeniero de ferrocarril jubilado cuya percepcion de la realidad empieza a resquebrajarse a causa de la enfermedad de Parkinson. Su esposa Enid, tras cincuenta años de matrimonio, sigue obsesionada con mantener el orden en su enorme casa de un prospero barrio residencial. Los tres hijos se establecieron en la costa Este años atras, lejos del hogar familiar. El mayor, Gary, es un alto ejecutivo bancario, un modelico padre de familia acosado por el fantasma de la depresion. Chip, el segundo, tras su fracaso en el mundo academico, se ha enfrascado en un nuevo proyecto de dudosa legalidad. Y Denise, la menor, extremadamente competitiva, triunfa como chef de un restaurante de moda, pero sufre los reveses de una vida sentimental inestable. En el pais, la realidad economica corrige las expectativas sobrevaloradas de

Con esta historia inmisericorde de una típica familia norteamericana, Jonathan Franzen obtuvo el National Book Award y el Premio James Tait Black Memorial, y fue finalista de los premios Pulitzer y Pen/Faulkner.De este meticuloso retrato de los Lambert emergen de forma brillante y profundamente humana las angustias y contradicciones de toda una sociedad, la norteamericana, y de una epoca, la ultima decada del siglo XX.Alfred Lambert es un ingeniero de ferrocarril jubilado cuya percepcion de la realidad empieza a resquebrajarse a causa de la enfermedad de Parkinson. Su esposa Enid, tras cincuenta años de matrimonio, sigue obsesionada con mantener el orden en su enorme casa de un prospero barrio residencial. Los tres hijos se establecieron en la costa Este años atras, lejos del hogar familiar. El mayor, Gary, es un alto ejecutivo bancario, un modelico padre de familia acosado por el fantasma de la depresion. Chip, el segundo, tras su fracaso en el mundo academico, se ha enfrascado en un nuevo proyecto de dudosa legalidad. Y Denise, la menor, extremadamente competitiva, triunfa como chef de un restaurante de moda, pero sufre los reveses de una vida sentimental inestable.En el pais, la realidad economica corrige las expectativas sobrevaloradas del mercado bursatil, mientras los medicamentos mas avanzados corrigen los trastornos del animo. Pero, en el ambito de la familia, ¿pueden los hijos corregir los errores de sus padres? Y en un orden de cosas mas concreto, ¿lograra Enid reunir a todos sus hijos para pasar una ultima Navidad juntos?La critica ha dicho... A la vez divertida y desoladora, indulgente y despiadada, Las correcciones es testimonio del alcance y la profundidad de los placeres que proporciona la ficcion excepcional. David Foster WallaceJonathan Franzen ha construido una imponente novela a partir de la incontenible conciencia de un matrimonio, de una familia, de una cultura entera. Don DeLilloTan sagaz como las novelas de los escritores posmodernos mas inteligentes [...] pero infinitamente mas accesible [...] Franzen deslumbra al lector con personajes conmovedoramente humanos.The NYT MagazineUna novela de elegante factura, perversamente inteligente [...] de las mas ambiciosas de los ultimos años. Diego Doncel, El CulturalUna novela de aliento [...] posee humor, se toma y no se deja, como todo aquello que de verdad merece la pena. J. M.ª Guelbenzu, BabeliaUna novela que aspira a revitalizar el genero, una metafora de la decada de los noventa y una saga de la familia americana contemporanea [...] se perfila como la primera gran novela del siglo. Javier Martinez de Pison, El PaisFranzen ha ingresado en la cupula de los grandes escritores norteamericanos con una novela social que no es demagogica, con una novela intimista que no es autocomplaciente, con una novela visionaria que no es arrogante. Sergi Sanchez, El PeriodicoSucesivamente divertida y corrosiva, solemne y emocionante, Las correcciones no solo muestra dos generaciones de una familia americana que intentan dar sentido a sus vidas, sino que abre ademas una ventana a un pais inhospito que avanza tambaleante hacia el nuevo milenio.The New York Times

UNA HISTORIA EXCEPCIONAL SOBRE LA VIDA DE UNA FAMILIA AMERICANA DE LOS AÑOS SETENTA «Encrucijadas es una novela excelente, la mejor de Franzen.»EL País «Cada novela de Jonathan Franzen es un aconteci

El retrato minucioso de una familia del Medio Oeste americano a lo largo de varias décadas adquiere en la prosa maestra de Jonathan Franzen un carácter universal y se convierte en una incisiva radiografia de nuestro tiempo. Patty y Walter Berglund son miembros de una nueva y floreciente clase urbana, pioneros en la recuperacion de un barrio degradado. Ademas de madre modelica y esposa perfecta, Patty es la vecina ideal, la que sabe donde se reciclan las pilas y como escoger un colegio adecuado para los niños. Junto con su marido Walter, abogado ecologista y ferviente defensor de la bicicleta, aportan su grano de arena a la construccion de un mundo mejor. Sin embargo, la llegada del nuevo milenio pone la vida de los Berglund patas arriba. Su hijo quinceañero se instala en casa de los vecinos republicanos, Walter acepta trabajar para una compañia minera, y Richard Katz, antiguo compañero de Walter, rockero extravagante y mujeriego empedernido, cobra un protagonismo insospechado en la pareja. Pero aun mas desconcertante es la evolucion de Patty, que de ser la figura mas activa del barrio se ha transformado en una mujer ensimismada en la busqueda de su propia felicidad. Con una efectiva combinacion de humor y tragedia, Franzen desgrana las tentaciones y las obligaciones que conlleva la libertad: los placeres de la pasion adolescente, los compromisos despreciados en la madurez, las consecuencias del anhelo desenfrenado de poder y riqueza que arrasa el pais. Asi, en los aciertos y errores de un grupo de personas que tratan de adaptarse a un mundo confuso y cambiante, Franzen ha pintado un cautivador retablo de nuestra epoca.La critica ha dicho...Hay sabiduria, inteligencia y felicidad en cada pagina. Esta es una novela verdaderamente grande, emocionante, inolvidable.Jose Maria Guelbenzu, Babelia, El Pais Una obra maestra, intensa, de lectura apasionante [...]. Una de esas cimas entre nubes que solo alcanzan los elegidos.Robert Saladrigas, Culturas, La VanguardiaUna gran novela, una enorme novela. Un minucioso y brillante estudio de personajes y de relaciones personales.Andres Ibañez, ABC Cultural Unafiesta narrativa [...] Libertad es una bella y compleja exploracion de un puñado de vidas intimas.Juan Gabriel Vasquez, El Pais Semanal

A great American writers confrontation with a great European critic a personal and intellectual awakening.Karl Kraus: satirist. Controversialist. Forgotten voice of the early twentieth century.Jonathan Franzen: bestseller. Contrarian. One of the greatest novelists working today.Recalling his student days, the celebrated author of The Corrections and Freedom recounts his discovery of Kraus and presents his own translations and annotations of the philosophers most famous essays.A pioneer of self-publishing, Kraus brilliantly attacked the mass media and the dehumanizing machinery of technology and capitalism. A notoriously difficult writer, Kraus has met his match in Franzen: a popular novelist unafraid to voice unpopular opinions. In the extensive footnotes Franzen explains why Kraus is relevant today while also revealing his own intellectual and personal preoccupations.Painstakingly wrought, strikingly original, The Kraus Project is a feast of thought and literature.

Jonathan Franzens new novel Purity due out next autumn.Purity has been described as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents. The story centers on a young woman named Purity Tyler who doesnt know who her father is and sets out to uncover his identity. The narrative stretches from contemporary America to South America to East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and hinges on the mystery of Pips family history and her relationship with a charismatic hacker and whistleblower.

The new novel from the author of The Corrections. Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outre rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbour, an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life and private dignity; and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Reprinted here for the first time is Franzen's controversial l996 investigation of the fate of the American novel in what became known as "the Harper's essay," as well as his award-winning narrative of his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease, and a rueful account of his brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author.

The new novel from the author of The Corrections. Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outre rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbour, an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

The new novel from the author of The Corrections. Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outre rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbour," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

Die Vorzeigeeltern Patty und Walter Berglund geben ihren Nachbarn in St. Paul plötzlich Rätsel auf: Ihr Sohn zieht zur proletenhaften Familie von nebenan. Der Umweltschützer Walter lässt sich auf einen zweifelhaften Pakt mit der Kohleindustrie ein und Ehefrau Patty verabschiedet sich von ihrem Hausfrauendasein. Und was hat Richard Katz, ehemaliger bester Freund und alternder Rockmusiker, mit all dem zu tun? Jonathan Franzen zeichnet in erneut ein scharfsinniges Gesellschaftsportrait. ist ein bedeutsames Buch über unser Leben in einer immer unübersichtlicher werdenden Welt.