JONATHAN FRANZEN

Since his debut novel, The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen has been writing brilliantly about the unraveling American Dream in its many permutations. In his novels The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, Franzen tackles difficult and complex characters in a style marked by his Midwest upbringing and his unique brand of social criticism. Franzen’s nonfiction includes Farther Away, The Kraus Project, and his newest essay collection, The End of the End of the Earth, in which he returns with renewed vigor to the themes—both human and literary—that have long preoccupied him. Whether exploring his complex relationship with his uncle, recounting his young adulthood in New York, or offering an illuminating look at the global seabird crisis, these pieces contain all the wit and disabused realism that readers have come to expect from Franzen.