Jonathan Franzen - Purity

In Conversation with Tom Barbash

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know much about herself other than her real name, which is Purity, her massive amounts of student debt, and her hazardous relationship with her mother. 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, which hopefully includes the secrets of her origins. Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. Jonathan Franzen has imagined a world of vividly original characters, Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers. Through their intertwining paths, Franzen creates one of the most daring and penetrating books yet by one of the major writers of our time.

Jonathan Franzen is a National Book Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He is the author of four novels (FreedomThe CorrectionsStrong Motion, and The Twenty-Seventh City), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How to Be Alone), a personal history (The Discomfort Zone), and a translation of Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening.

Tom Barbash is the author of the award-winning novel The Last Good Chance and the non-fiction book On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11; A Story of Loss and Renewal, which was a New York Times bestseller. His stories and articles have been published in Tin House, McSweeney's, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications, and have been performed on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts series. He currently teaches in the MFA program at California College of the Arts. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives in Marin County, California.

 

Location: 

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
Purity: A Novel By Jonathan Franzen Cover Image
$28.00
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ISBN: 9780374239213
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - September 1st, 2015