Jonathan Franzen

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 PaisUna 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 CulturalUna fiesta narrativa [...] Libertad es una bella y compleja exploracion de un puñado de vidas intimas. Juan Gabriel Vasquez, El Pais Semanal

NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER *A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: TOP TENA spellbinding novel (People) from the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinsons disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself that, despite certain alarming indicators, he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married manor so her mother fears.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paulthe gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, 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 Walters dreams. Together with Walterenvironmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family manshe 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 Katzoutre rocker and Walters college best friend and rivalstill doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbor, an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the streets 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 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 Freedoms 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. Show more Show less

The new book of articles and opinion from Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections. Jonathan Franzens Freedom was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the 21st century. Now, a new collection of Franzens non-fiction brings fresh demonstrations of his vivid, moral intelligence, confirming his status not only as a great American novelist but also as a master noticer, social critic, and self-investigator.

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.

Young Pip Tyler doesnt know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that shes saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother―her only family―is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how shell ever have a normal life. It takes a seemingly chance encounter with two visitors from Germany to send Pip―and the reader―on a journey of discovery that ranges from Stasi-era East Berlin to a rainforest in Bolivia; and from the ancient war between the sexes to the present-day bewilderments of the Internet. Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder―the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.

La giovane Purity Tyler, detta Pip, non conosce la sua vera identita.Sua madre, per un motivo misterioso, non vuole rivelarle chi e suo padre, l''uomo dal quale e fuggita prima che Pip nascesse, cambiando nome e ritirandosi a vivere nell''anonimato tra i boschi della California settentrionale. Pip e povera: ha un pesante debito studentesco da ripagare e vive in una casa occupata a Oakland, frequentata da un gruppo di anarchici.Ed e proprio li che incontra Annagret, un''attivista tedesca che le apre le porte di uno stage con il Sunlight Project, l''organizzazione fondata dal famoso e carismatico Andreas Wolf, un leaker rivale di Julian Assange, allo scopo di rivelare i segreti dei potenti. Pip parte per la Bolivia, dove ha sede il Sunlight Project, con la speranza di poter usare la tecnologia degli hacker per svelare il segreto dell''identita di suo padre.Ma l''incontro con Andreas Wolf si rivela sconvolgente per molti motivi. Anche Andreas ha un terribile segreto nascosto nel suo passato, negli anni in cui viveva a Berlino Est come figlio ribelle di una madre squilibrata e di un padre pezzo grosso del Partito Comunista. Lo rivela proprio a Pip, con la quale instaura una relazione intensa e morbosa.Forse i suoi moventi segreti sono legati a Tom Aberant, il giornalista di Denver per il quale Pip andra a lavorare dopo lo stage con il Sunlight Project, destabilizzando la relazione di Tom con la sua compagna Leila e portando un grande sconvolgimento anche nelle loro vite...

Die junge Pip Tyler wei nicht, wer ihr Vater ist. Das ist keineswegs ihr einziges Problem: Sie hat Studienschulden, ihr Burojob in Oakland ist eine Sackgasse, sie liebt einen verheirateten Mann, und ihre Mutter erdruckt sie mit Liebe und Geheimniskramerei. Pip wei weder, wo und wann sie geboren wurde, noch kennt sie den wirklichen Namen und Geburtstag ihrer Mutter. Als ihr eines Tages eine Deutsche beim Sunlight Project des Whistleblowers Andreas Wolf ein Praktikum anbietet, hofft sie, dass der ihr mit seinem Internet-Journalismus bei der Vatersuche helfen kann. Sie stellt ihre Mutter vor die Wahl: Entweder sie luftet das Geheimnis ihrer Herkunft, oder Pip macht sich auf nach Bolivien, wo Andreas Wolf im Schutz einer paradiesischen Bergwelt sein Enthullungswerk vollbringt. Und wenig spater bricht sie auf.Unschuld, eine tiefschwarze Komodie uber jugendlichen Idealismus, malose Treue und den Kampf zwischen den Geschlechtern, handelt von Schuld in den unterschiedlichsten Facetten: Andreas Wolf, in Ost-Berlin als Sohn eines hochrangigen DDR-Politfunktionars geboren, hat aus Liebe zu einer Frau vor Jahren ein Verbrechen begangen; ein Amerikaner, dem er in den Wirren des Berliner Mauerfalls begegnet, hat den Kinderwunsch seiner Frau nicht erfullt und sie dann verlassen; dessen neue Lebensgefahrtin kann ihrem Ehemann, der im Rollstuhl sitzt, nicht den Rucken kehren und pflegt ihn weiter ... In diesem fulminanten amerikanisch-deutschen Gesellschaftsroman eines der groten, sprachmachtigsten Autoren unserer Zeit uberschlagen sich die Ereignisse. Und bannen den Leser bis zum Schluss.

Neste romance cuja ação se desenrola praticamente em um único dia, Jonathan Franzen constrói a história de uma família do Meio-Oeste em um momento de crise moral e religiosa. É 23 de dezembro de 1971

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections In The End of the End of the Earth, which gathers essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, Jonathan Franzen 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 we've come to expect from Franzen. Taken together, these essays trace the progress of a unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day, made more pressing by the current political milieu. The End of the End of the Earth is remarkable, provocative and necessary.

Jonathan Franzenas gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.Itas December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joylessaunless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clemas sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, whoas been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.Jonathan Franzenas novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonate

Enid e Alfred Lambert, in una citta del Midwest americano, trascinano legiornate accumulando oggetti, ricordi, delusioni e frustrazioni del loromatrimonio: l'uno in preda ai sintomi di un Parkinson che preferisce ignorare,l'altra con il desiderio, ormai diventato scopo di vita, di radunare per unultimo Natale i tre figli allevati secondo le regole e i valori dell'Americadel dopoguerra, attenti a correggere ogni deviazione dal giusto. Ma ifigli se ne sono andati sulla costa: Gary, dirigente di banca, vittima di unadepressione strisciante e di una moglie infantile; Chip che ha perso il postoall'universita per comportamento sessuale scorretto; infine Denise, chef disuccesso che conduce una vita privata discutibile secondo i Lambert.

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.