The Discomfort Zone

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen's tale of growing up, squirming in his own über-sensitive skin, from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," into an adult with strong inconvenient passions. Whether he's writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between bird watching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelingly engaged with the world we live in now. The Discomfort Zone is a wise, funny, and gorgeously written self-portrait by one of America's finest writers.

Franzen is the author of The Corrections, winner of the National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PenFaulkner. He is also the author of Freedom, selected for Oprah's Book Club, The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, and How to Be Alone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In 1996, he was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists.

He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.