franzen
2003 Shortlist

The Corrections

ABOUT
THE BOOK

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, despite clear signs to the contrary, that 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.
Stretching from the Midwest at mid-century to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care and globalised greed.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Jonathan
Franzen

Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 and is the author of five novels – The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom, Purity, – a collection of essays, How to Be Alone, a memoir, The Discomfort Zone and a translation of Spring Awakening, and most recently, The Kraus Project, a translation and consideration of Karl Kraus’s essays.

His honours include a Whiting Writers Award in 1988, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize in 2000, and the National Book Award in 2001. He writes frequently for the New Yorker, and lives in New York City.

Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 and is the author of five novels – The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom, Purity, – a collection of essays, How to Be Alone, a memoir, The Discomfort Zone and a translation of Spring Awakening, and most recently, The Kraus Project, a translation and consideration of Karl Kraus’s essays.

His honours include a Whiting Writers Award in 1988, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize in 2000, and the National Book Award in 2001. He writes frequently for the New Yorker, and lives in New York City.

STAY CONNECTED

Stay in touch and sign up to our newsletter to receive all the latest news and updates on the Dublin Literary Award.