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THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
‘A genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first century’ Elle
‘Funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent’ Guardian

A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers.

The Lamberts – Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children – are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to Parkinson’s. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas.

‘Compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited’ Daily Mail

‘A novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insight’ Financial Times

‘A big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funny’ Independent

Publisher Review

'Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole culture' Don DeLillo 'Impossible to dislike, an unpretentious page-turner' Zadie Smith 'Compelling. A pleasure from beginning to end. Franzen, in one leap, has put himself into the league of Updike and Roth' Evening Standard 'A book which is funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent, and which poses the ultimate question: what life is for? And that is as much as anyone could ask' Guardian 'Intelligent, compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited, it is a rare thing, a modern novel with both head and heart' Daily Mail