Purity

(Hardback)

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A magnum opus for our morally complex times from the author of FREEDOM and THE CORRECTIONS
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 shes squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother her only family is hazardous. But she doesnt 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.

Enter the Germans. 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 who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesnt understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Jonathan Franzens Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.

Reviews

Superbly readable, it is the work of a novelist at the height of his powers The skills that have justly placed Franzen in the top rank of American writers are abundantly evident This new work by an American master of realism has novelistic pleasures in abundance: characters one believes in and cares about, situations drenched in atmosphere and detail, and, above all, a propulsive current of storytelling verve Sunday Times

Purity is just as good as Freedom, if not better by virtue of its greater ambition Independent

This novel contains multitudes: love, murder, marital terrorism, embarrassing sex, nasty sex, solo sex, the Stasi, internet leaks, missing nuclear weapons, missing fathers, overbearing mothers and a variety of interesting bowel disorders. What you wont find much of is purity Sunday Telegraph

Franzen in an exceptional writer, more skilled than most at producing brutal insights, perfectly evocative turns of phrase, and genuine hilarity rich scenes and crackling dialogue delicious observations about contemporary life Guardian

Franzen writes conversational, enormously intelligent prose that wears its subtlety and precision lightly theres something thrilling about Franzens frenzied but at the same
time self-mocking and capacious seriousness Independent

An ingeniously-plotted, intricately-structured narrative that demands that attention is paid gripping, often funny and packed with wonderful characters Prospect

Franzen is that rare bird: a literary novelist of the highest distinction who has also become one of the bestsellers of the age Purity makes the most compelling reading, and Franzen reveals himself here to be even more a master than ever David Sexton, Evening Standard

Wonderful Daily Mail

Compelling The Times

Very readable Good Housekeeping

Author Bio

Jonathan Franzen's work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.