FREEDOM
JONATHAN FRANZEN

Fourteen years ago, Jonathan Franzen declared in Harper’s magazine that sweeping, socially engaged novels by serious writers had lost their appeal. He then went on to write a sweeping, socially engaged novel that sold more than 1.5 million copies and won the National Book Award.

Nearly a decade after his 2001 novel, The Corrections, Franzen is attempting to prove himself wrong a second time.

Freedom is a multi-generational epic that follows an idealistic young couple who settle in the rough neighbourhood of St Paul, Minnesota. A very powerful insight into disillusion in marriage, and a story about the challenges, burdens and opportunities of personal freedom, the novel is full of the more generous ironies that endeared The Corrections to readers and literary reviewers alike. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s intensely realised 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.

International hype for Franzen’s new novel is growing rapidly, with strong support coming from booksellers and critics alike:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/06/jonathan-franzen-freedom

‘Nine years after winning the National Book Award, Franzen’s The Corrections consistently appears on “Best of the Decade” lists and continues to enjoy a popularity that borders on the epochal, so much so that the first question facing Franzen’s feverishly awaited follow-up is whether it can find its own voice in its predecessor’s shadow. In short: yes, it does, and in a big way.
Franzen pits his excavation of the cracks in the nuclear family’s facade against a backdrop of all-American faults and fissures, but where the book stands apart is that, no longer content merely to record the breakdown, Franzen tries to account for his often stridently unlikable characters and find where they (and we) went wrong, arriving at—incredibly—genuine hope.’ Publishers Weekly

‘Freedom is superb and so important for us all right now.  You know how much I'm a fan of The Corrections with its wonderful premise of a mother trying to glue the family back together artificially for Thanksgiving.  Freedom has all the great issues of our time woven into the Berglund family history in a way that only Franzen can do it, placing such a vast and uncertain landscape into a small cast of lives.  At times I thought I was reading Updike, only more intimate, more scary, more openly aware of disintegration and extinction.  It brings out the guilt in all of us.’ Hugo Hamilton

Jonathan Franzen is the author of three novels – including The Corrections – a collection of non-fiction and a memoir. He lives in New York City.
In 2001 Jonathan Franzen took the literary world by storm with The Corrections.
Winner of the National Book Award, New York Times No. 1 bestseller, The Corrections established itself as a truly great American novel, one that is now almost universally seen as the novel of the decade.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Fourth Estate
Published: 1 September 2010
NZ  RRP: $38.99