Freedom

This is the story of the Berglunds, their son Joey, their daughter Jessica and their friend Richard Katz. It is about how we use and abuse our freedom; about the beginning and ending of love; teenage lust; the unexpectedness of adult life; why we compete with our friends; how we betray those closest to us; and why things almost never work out as they ‘should’. It is a story about the human heart, and what it leads us to do to ourselves and each other.

Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 and is the author of four novels – The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Strong Motion (1992), The Corrections (2001), Freedom (2010), – a collection of essays, How to Be Alone (2002), a memoir, The Discomfort Zone (2006) and a translation of Spring Awakening, a play by Frank Wedekind (2007), and most recently, The Kraus Project, a translation and consideration of Karl Kraus’s essays. His honours include a Whiting Writers Award in 1988, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize in 2000, and the National Book Award (for The Corrections) in 2001. He writes frequently for the New Yorker, and lives in New York City.

‘Deeper, funnier, sadder and truer than a work of fiction has any right to be’ Independent on Sunday

'Head and shoulders above any other book this year: moving, funny and unexpectedly beautiful. I missed it when it was over' Sam Mendes, Observer, Books of the Year

'A cat's cradle of family life, and if the measure of a good book is its afterburn, ‘Freedom’ is a great book' Kirsty Wark Observer, Books of the Year

'I loved ‘Freedom’. His acute observations of emotional faultlines, his dialogue and above all his wry humour are delightful' Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

'Franzen pulls off the extraordinary feat of making the lives of his characters more real to you than your own' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year

'No question about it: ‘Freedom’ swept everything before it in intricately observed, humane, unprejudiced armfuls. There was no novel to touch it in 2010' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

'By the end of ‘Freedom’ you may feel you understand its protagonists better than you know anyone in the world around you' Nicholas Hytner, Evening Standard, Books of the Year

'The novel of the year. Its portrait of a marriage, luminously and wittily drawn against a backdrop of modern America, is as good as literature gets' Sarah Sands, New Statesman, Books of the Year —