First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 568. Quarter-bound brown cloth over textured paper boards, title blind-stamped to spine and author's initials to upper board; brown endpapers. Jacket design by Julian Humphries with illustration by Sarah White.
Signed by Franzen to title page in his characteristic squiggle. Light toning to page edges, else Fine.
Author's third novel. Winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award. Winner of the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Nominated for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Selected as one of their 10 Best Books of 2001 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Listed at No. 16 in "The 100 Best Books of 21st Century" by The Guardian in 2019. Annointed as one of the 20 Best American Novelists under the age of 40 by both Granta and The New Yorker. A controversial Oprah Book Club selection, after Franzen declined her invitation to appear on the show.
Framed by matriarch Enid Lambert's desperate attempts to gather her brood back home for one last Christmas, Franzen's tragi-comic novel about the breakdown of a dysfunctional Midwestern family took almost a decade to complete. "Large-hearted and merciless." –David Foster Wallace