Jonathan Franzen

Russ er en frustreret præst, hvis svagheder og frustrationer nok er menneskelige, men ikke mindre i vejen for både ægteskab og familieliv af den grund. Hans hustru Marion er et kompliceret geni, plaget af en historie med psykisk sygdom. Mellem ægteparret befinder deres fire børn sig, som hver især må finde deres vej i familien og i verden. Korsveje af den amerikanske forfatter Jonathan Franzen er en roman, der graver dybt i karakterernes psykologi og interne relationer, og som samtidig skildrer USA fra Vietnam-krigen og frem, en nation i oprør og midt i store forandringer. Det er en roman om familieliv og søskenderivalisering, hvor hver enkelt må kæmpe for at finde mening i livet, men også en stort anlagt roman om USA's åndelige og samfundsmæssige krise i 1970'erne. Denne bog er oversat af Mich Vraa.

Jonathan Franzen er kalt «et litterært geni for vår tid» (The Guardian). Hans evne til å kombinere levende karakterbeskrivelser med sosial dybde og innsikt har aldri vært tydeligere. Korsveien er nok et mesterverk fra forfatteren av Korrigeringer, Frihet og Renhet. Hver av familiemedlemmene vi møter i romanen søker en frihet som hver av de andre truer med å begrense. Det er 23.desember 1971 og det er meldt dårlig vær i Chicago. Pastor Russ Hildebrandt er i ferd med å bryte ut av et gledesløst ekteskap. Om ikke hans kone, Marion gjør det slutt først. Deres eldste sønn, Clem, kommer hjem fra universitetet full av moralsk opphøydhet, klar for å ta en beslutning som vil sjokkere foreldrene. Søsteren Becky, den sosiale dronningen på videregående skole, involveres stadig mer i tidens motkultur, mens lillebror Perry er gått lei av å selge pot på skolen og har bestemt seg for å bli et bedre menneske. I et intervju i Aftenposten forteller Jonathan Franzen:– Jeg er interessert i det irrasjonelle fundamentet for oppfatningene vi lever livene våre etter. Det føyer seg inn i et større prosjekt bestående av denne boken og bøkene som kan følge.– Jeg har alltid vært interessert i rett og galt. Og det større spørsmålet om hvorvidt noen kan kalles «god» eller «ond», fortsetter han.– Dette har vært et hovedanliggende i religion, og i jødisk-kristen religion især: hva rettferd faktisk innebærer, hvilke bud som er vesentlige. Jeg føler meg hjemme i den verdenen. Jeg kan relatere til fortellingene i Bibelen fordi spørsmålet står så sentralt.

Jonathan Franzen's gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. It's 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 joyless--unless 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. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's 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 Franzen's 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 resonates powerfully with our own. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER *A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: TOP TEN "A 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 Parkinson's 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 man--or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.

The debut novel of New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, The Twenty-Seventh City is "a startling, scathing first novel about American ambition, power, politics, money, corruption and apathy" (People). St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, The Twenty-Seventh City shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, the American Dream unraveling into terror and dark comedy. "Unsettling and visionary... A book of memorable characters, surprising situations, and provocative ideas."--The Washington Post "An imaginative and riveting examination of our flawed society... A rare blend of entertainment and profound social commentary."--Chicago Sun-Times

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Notable Book "So funny, so sage and above all so incandescently intelligent" (The Chicago Tribune), the New York Times bestseller Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder, a daring and penetrating book from "the most intelligent novelist of his] generation" (The New Republic), Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's 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 she'll ever have a normal life. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with the Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world--including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and she is equally conflicted about her attraction to him. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters, and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes.

From the author of Crossroads and The Corrections New York Times Bestselling AuthorNational Book Award Winner "Jonathan Franzen, an abundantly gifted writer, has even more nerve than talent" (The New York Times), and he refuses to play it safe in this bold, layered ecological thriller. Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of strange happenings--earthquakes strike the city, and the first one kills his grandmother. During a bitter feud over the inheritance, Louis falls in love with a young seismologist, Ren e Seitchek, whose theory about the origin of the earthquakes turns his world upside down. "No doubt about it: Jonathan Franzen . . . is one of the most extraordinary writers around." --Newsweek "Strong Motion seems for a while like a brilliant chaos. Bit by bit, the chaos settles . . . the brilliant things remain, and the connections among them begin to appear." --Los Angeles Times

The climate crisis is here. Our chance to stop it has come and gone, but this doesn't have to mean the world is ending.

The climate crisis is here. Our chance to stop it has come and gone, but this doesn't have to mean the world is ending. 'Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you're younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth-massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you're under thirty, you're all but guaranteed to witness it. If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world's inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.' This is Jonathan Franzen's controversial New Yorker essay, published as a single volume that discusses a planet on the cusp of and what and how individuals can respond to that.

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections--now with a new epilogue The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like "a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them." For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calamities, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world. Franzen's great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one's prejudices, he writes, literature "invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you." Whatever his subject, Franzen's essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He's frank about birds, too (they kill "everything imaginable"), but his reporting and reflections on them--on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica--are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love. Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.

Sedan genombrottet med romanen Tillrättalägganden för snart tjugo år sedan hör Jonathan Franzen till en av den engelskspråkiga världens främsta författare. Med blicken främst fäst på hemlandet USA är han en skarp iakttagare av hur vi beter oss här på jorden, inte minst ur ett klimat-perspektiv. I sin nya essäsamling återvänder han till en av sina stora passioner; fåglar. Boken är en hyllning till deras skönhet och är en uppmaning till oss alla att agera för att rädda det vi älskar. Träffsäker, lågmäld och full av klokskap ger Jonathan Franzen i Här slutar världens ände oss en välkommen tankeställare präglad av hopp och förnuft.

A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections

Siden gjennombruddet med Korrigeringer i 2001, har Jonathan Franzen seilet opp som en av de viktigste, amerikanske forfatterne i sin generasjon. Han er også en skarp essayist. I Slutten på jordens ende, spenner han opp et bredt lerret. Selv om temaene er store og varierte, går klimaangsten som en tråd gjennom flere av essayene: Hvordan skal vi finne mening i en verden på kanten av økologisk krise, der sjansene for å snu blir stadig mindre? Essayene i denne samlingen er velskrevne, presise, undersøkende og ofte morsomt sørgmodige. Franzen skriver om gamle og brutte vennskap; om kapitalisme og teknologiskepsis; om fotografi og litteratur. Ved flere anledninger, skriver han også om sin fascinasjon for fugler, og mismotet over fremtiden som venter dem. Likevel er det aksept, ikke resignasjon, som er betegnende for disse essayene – enten det dreier seg om klima eller brutte vennskap. Som alltid benytter Franzen sin særegne evnen til å finne små detaljer fra hverdagen, utsette dem for sitt granskende blikk, og vise frem noe slående allment i det partikulære. Slutten på jordens ende rommer essay om det vi deler, tingene som forener oss, eller tingene som har potensial til å gjøre det.

De seneste 25 år har den amerikanske forfatter Jonathan Franzen ved siden af sit succesrige skønlitterære forfatterskab levet et andet liv som risikovillig essayist. I sin nye essaysamling giver han blandt andet et bud på, hvordan vi tackler en uundgåelig klimakrise. For krisen er uafvendelig, ifølge Franzen. Men i stedet for at stirre os blinde og magtesløse på klimaapokalypsens komme skal vi koncentrere os om de mange mindre ting, som det faktisk er muligt at gøre noget ved. Uanset emne er Jonathan Franzen altid kritisk over for forudindtagede holdninger, og hans essays er lige så gennemsyrede af ironi, som de er ærlige om egne ufuldkommenheder. Franzen er også ærlig om sin store passion: fugle (de dræber ”alt muligt”), men hans beskrivelser af dem – havfugle i New Zealand, sangere i Østafrika, pingviner i Antarktis – er både en rørende hyldest til deres skønhed og livskraft og en opfordring til os alle om at redde det, vi holder af. Forfatteren til bøger som Korrektioner, Frihed og Purity er her tilbage med en ny tankevækkende og dybt vedkommende essaysamling. Behersket, med vid og bid og omhyggelige argumenter, sørger Ved enden af verdens ende for et velkomment pust af håb og fornuft.

Maailman äärillä on vaikuttava kokoelma Jonathan Franzenin esseitä ja puheita viimeisen kymmenen vuoden ajalta. Franzen käsittelee esseissään tämän päivän polttavimpia kysymyksiä: ekologisen ajattelun ja kapitalismin ristiriitaa, epätasa-arvon ja rotukysymysten haastetta sekä teknologian murrosta. Samalla hän tutkii taiteen roolia ja mahdollisuuksia ekokatastrofin ja epävarmuuden aikakaudella. Franzenin hellittämätön taipumus vältellä helppoja vastauksia sekä hänen kykynsä syvälliseen itsereflektioon tekevät kirjasta stimuloivaa luettavaa. Franzen vie itsensä ja lukijansa epämukavuusalueelle ja haastaa meidät kysymään itseltämme epämiellyttäviä kysymyksiä: itsestämme, velvollisuuksistamme sekä suhteestamme toisiin ihmisiin, eläimiin ja yhteiseen ympäristöömme. Maailman äärillä kasvaa vetoomukseksi empatian, taiteen ja ennen kaikkea luonnon kauneuden ja monimuotoisuuden säilyttämiseksi.