Most Popular Books by Jennifer Egan

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn''t, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune). One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction The daring and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Esquire, Vogue, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA TODAY, and Time Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. u200eYears later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished. “A magnificent achievement, at once a suspenseful noir intrigue and a transporting work of lyrical beauty and emotional heft” (The Boston Globe), “Egan’s first foray into historical fiction makes you forget you’re reading historical fiction at all” (Elle). Manhattan Beach takes us into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men in a dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE of the TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR by THE NEW YORK TIMES * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * SLATE* THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER * Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Self, Vogue, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more! OLIVIA WILDE to direct A24''s TV adaptation of THE CANDY HOUSE and A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD! From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an “inventive, effervescent” (Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection. The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—which allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and there are “eluders,” those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love. “A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history” (San Francisco Chronicle), “this is minimalist maximalism. It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive” (The New York Times).

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "Part horror tale, part mystery, part romance ... utterly fantastic.”—O, The Oprah Magazine • The bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad brilliantly conjures a world from which escape is impossible and where the keep—the tower, the last stand—is both everything worth protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive. Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results. And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • In this ambitiously multilayered novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, a fashion model named Charlotte Swenson emerges from a car accident in her Illinois hometown with her face so badly shattered that it takes eighty titanium screws to reassemble it. She returns to New York still beautiful but oddly unrecognizable, a virtual stranger in the world she once effortlessly occupied. With the surreal authority of a David Lynch, Jennifer Egan threads Charlotte’s narrative with those of other casualties of our infatuation with the image. There’s a deceptively plain teenaged girl embarking on a dangerous secret life, an alcoholic private eye, and an enigmatic stranger who changes names and accents as he prepares an apocalyptic blow against American society. As these narratives inexorably converge, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing intellectual thriller of identity and imposture.

''Close your eyes and slowly count backward from ten.'' America, the near future. A young spy on a mission logs her observations. The result is an intense thriller, and a minute dissection of the experience of a woman whose beauty is also her camouflage, for whom control relies on submission: a woman whose success - whose life - depends on being seen and not seen. Originally published online via Twitter by @NYerFiction, Jennifer Egan''s first new fiction since the phenomenal success of A Visit From the Goon Squad is a taut, compulsive work of unrelenting genius.

A collection of masterful stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad: “Boldly modulated tales of displacement and blazing moments of truth.... Riveting, vaguely Hitchcockian.... Piercingly tender.... Outstanding" (The New York Times Book Review). These elegant and poignant stories—Egan''s first collection—deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan’s characters—models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls—are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. The stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Sam Lafferty has hit bottom. Under investigation and on leave from the financial services firm that employed him, Sam has uprooted his wife and two daughters and dragged them against their will to central China. While on this rotten family vacation, in an alien and uncomfortable landscape, after years of deception, lousy investment, moral—and soon-coming financial—bankruptcy, and with his family in tow—Sam pursues the man who had first set him on a path to corruption from crumbling binguan hotels without soap or towels to Buddhist caves near Xi’an. In this dazzling piece, selected from the stunning collection of short fiction Emerald City, by the critically acclaimed author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Jennifer Egan lays bare our capacity for failure. An ebook short.

The highly acclaimed debut novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of A Visit from the Good Squad follows two sisters in the 1970s—one lost, one seeking—on "a trip that takes the reader through stunning emotional terrain" (The New Yorker). The political drama and familial tensions of the 1960s form a backdrop for the world of Phoebe O’Connor, age eighteen, in 1978. Phoebe is obsessed with the memory and death of her sister Faith, a beautiful idealistic hippie who died in Italy in 1970. In order to find out the truth about Faith’s life and death, Phoebe retraces her steps from San Francisco across Europe, a quest which yields both complex and disturbing revelations about family, love, and Faith’s lost generation. This spellbinding novel introduced Egan’s remarkable ability to tie suspense with deeply insightful characters and the nuances of emotion.

These eleven masterful stories - the first collection from acclaimed author Jennifer Egan - deal with loneliness and longing, regret and desire. Egan''s characters, models and housewives, bankers and schoolgirls, are united by their search for something outside their own realm of experience. They set out from locations as exotic as China and Bora Bora, as cosmopolitan as downtown Manhattan, or as familiar as suburban Illinois to seek their own transformations. Elegant and poignant, the stories in Emerald City are seamless evocations of self-discovery.

The holidays are not always perfect. Christmas does not always turn out as you planned. Curl up and enjoy another look at this winter season. Enjoy the nostalgic, the romantic, and the unusual from humorous, to love, to suspense. Here are some stories that will make you smile, warm your heart and chill your soul. These stories will keep you turning the pages in this holiday collection filled with, couples in love, snow ball pranksters, and women being stalked. Settle down, curl up, and be surprised by the unexpected.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

Une plongée éblouissante dans un New York peuplé de gangsters, de marins, de scaphandriers, durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Quand tout changea entre les hommes et les femmes, entre l''Amérique et le monde. Alors qu''elle a presque douze ans, Anna Kerrigan accompagne son père chez Dexter Styles, un homme qui, comprend-elle, est crucial pour la survie de sa famille. Derrière sa maison, elle aperçoit l''océan, qui l''émerveille autant que le mystère pesant qui lie les deux hommes. Des années plus tard, son père a disparu, et le pays est en guerre. Anna travaille au chantier naval de Brooklyn, où les femmes effectuent des tâches autrefois réservées aux hommes, désormais au front. Elle devient la première femme scaphandrier ; sa mission essentielle, des plus dangereuses, consiste à réparer les navires qui aideront les États- Unis à remporter la guerre. Un soir, dans un club, elle croise de nouveau le chemin de Dexter Styles, et commence à comprendre la complexité de la vie de son père, ainsi que les possibles raisons de sa disparition. Sélection des 25 meilleurs livres de l''année du Point

Tributo à tradição dos grandes romances americanos, o novo livro da vencedora do Prêmio Pulitzer acompanha Anna Kerrigan e Dexter Styles em um universo noir povoado por gângsteres, mergulhadores e banqueiros durante os tempestuosos anos 1940. Com quase 12 anos, Anna acompanha o pai à casa de Styles, uma figura enigmática que pode ser crucial para a sobrevivência de sua família. Durante a visita, ela fica completamente hipnotizada pelo mar em volta da construção e pelo mistério que ronda a relação entre os dois homens. Anos depois, o pai de Anna desaparece. Já adulta, ela se torna a primeira mulher mergulhadora e conserta os navios que vão ajudar o país durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. É nesse cenário que, em uma noite de folga, reencontra Styles em uma boate. Certa de que ele pode ajudar a desvendar os segredos que envolvem a história do pai, Anna inicia uma relação tão improvável quanto perigosa.

Jack has sensory processing disorder and experiences life differently. Jack visits his Grandparents’ cabin and learns to like the snow. He gets encouragement from different family members and learns to be brave, in order to join in and make a snowman with his family. Come join Jack on his journey, and learn to be brave along with him!

‘Sort boks’ er kvindens missionslog – en spionthriller i twitterformat fra bestseller-forfatteren Jennifer Egan.

"É essa a realidade, não é? Vinte anos depois, a sua beleza já foi para o lixo, especialmente quando arrancaram fora metade das suas entranhas. O tempo é cruel, não é? Não é assim que se diz?” Bennie Salazar é um executivo da indústria fonográfica. Sasha é sua assistente cleptomaníaca. E é a partir da história desses dois personagens que Jennifer Egan retrata, em uma narrativa caleidoscópica, a passagem do tempo e a transformação das relações. Da São Francisco dos anos 1970 até a Nova York de um futuro próximo, a autora cria um romance de estilo ímpar sobre continuidade e rupturas, memória e expectativas. Surpreendente, A visita cruel do tempo combina diferentes pontos de vista sobre histórias que se entrelaçam de maneiras inesperadas. Ao longo dos sabores e dissabores da vida dos personagens, Egan traça um interessante e envolvente panorama sobre crescimento, perda e ambição e sobre o que acontece entre o que esperamos de nossa vida e o que se torna realidade.

Charlotte husker intet fra den bilulykke, der for altid forandrer hendes ansigt og dermed hendes identitet og karriere som model i Manhattans modeverden. Hun er forbandet over sin bitre skæbne og føler ingen større taknemmelighed over for den mystiske fremmede, som reddede hende ud af den brændende bil. Charlotte tvinges på rekreation i sin triste og på alle måder ufashionable hjemby i Illinois, uden for projektørernes skarpe lys. Her støder hun på en ung pige, som viser sig at være hendes navnesøster, og mens Charlotte kun ser en umiddelbar sammenhæng, forstår læseren bid for bid en dybere hemmelighed, som de to kvinder deler. ’Se på mig’ er en på én gang bidende morsom og forunderlig roman om Charlottes groteske og grænseoverskridende strabadser for at overleve i en billedstyret verden – og en nænsom fortælling om den unge Charlottes enspænderliv og første, voldsomme forelskelse i en sky og ensom lærer. ”Se på mig er morsom og alvorlig, på én gang nøgtern og fantastisk udtænkt. Egan skriver lige så knivskarpt, som hun registrerer verden. Læs den!” The Independent

Der meisterhafte Schauerroman von Pulitzer-Preisträgerin Jennifer Egan: Irgendwo in Europa treffen sich zwei Cousins auf einer verfallenen Burg. Howard ist zu Macht und Ansehen gekommen, während Danny, der Internetfreak, nach immer neuen Ablenkungen sucht. Schon bald nach seiner Ankunft glaubt Danny, dass sein Cousin ihn an diesen seltsamen Ort gelockt hat, um Rache zu nehmen – und ein altes Familiengeheimnis zu lüften. »Ein Leseerlebnis, das Kafka, Calvino und Poe vereinigt. Höchst unterhaltsam.« Elle »Jennifer Egan hat das Genre der Gothic Novel kunstvoll gegen den Strich gebürstet.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung »Solch spielerische Meisterhaftigkeit [...] so ein Leservergnügen, bei der sich intellektuelles Spiel und leichter Grusel die Waage halten.« Der Tagesspiegel

2011 the Pulitzer Prize winner A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan. This book entitled with numerous awards and accolades including National Bestseller, National Book Critics Circle ward Winner, PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist, A New York Times Book Review Best Book. In Korean. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

»›Buddenbrooks‹ für die Twitter-Generation.« Handelsblatt. »Der größere Teil der Welt«, ausgezeichnet mit dem Pulitzer-Preis 2011 ist in 28 Sprachen übersetzt und ein internationaler Bestseller. Bennie Salazar, Musikproduzent und Ex-Punkrocker hat scheinbar alles erreicht. Ebenso Sasha, seine Assistentin, von der niemand vermutet, dass sie eine zwanghafte Kleptomanin ist. Als Scotty, ehemaliger Gitarrist und Bennies erfolgloser Schatten, im Büro seines Freundes erscheint, taucht die Vergangenheit blitzartig wieder auf. In einem schwindelerregenden Kaleidoskop lässt Jennifer Egan eine Epoche lebendig werden: von den 70er Jahren in San Francisco über die 90er Jahre in New York bis hinein in eine ungewisse Zukunft. Im Sommer 2022 erscheint »Candy Haus«, Jennifer Egans neuer Roman, in dem sie das Netz aus Lebensgeschichten weiter knüpft bis in unsere digitale Gegenwart. »Ein tollkühnes Buch mit einem süchtig machenden Sog.« Andrea Köhler, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Un retrato tragicómico y nostálgico de la industria musical estadounidense desde los años sesenta hasta hoy. Premio Pulitzer Ganadora del Premio Pulitzer (2011) y elegida como uno de los mejores libros de la década por la revista Time, esta novela está compuesta por trece historias interconectadas que giran alrededor de la vida de Bennie Salazar, antiguo rockero punk envejecido y ejecutivo discográfico, y Sasha, su apasionada y problemática asistente. Una historia generacional con múltiples caídas que abordan desde la contracultura de San Francisco en los años setenta hasta el hastío de los noventa y la incertidumbre posterior al 11S. Con la música palpitando en cada página, Egan muestra los efectos del tiempo y la tecnología en las personas, así como las transformaciones que provocan en nuestras vidas. La crítica ha dicho: «Una magistral novela en la que Egan cuenta, jugando con el tiempo pasado, el presente y el futuro, una adictiva historia sobre las derivas e implicaciones del mundo digital, la tecnología y las redes». Información «Una novela rica e inolvidable sobre la decadencia y la resistencia, sobre individuos en un mundoque cambia a su alrededor... [Egan] es una de las escritoras con más talento de la actualidad». The New York Review of Books «Una muestra del extremo virtuosismo de Egan». The New York Times «Egan se merece todos los elogios: su libro es una curiosa y muy lograda combinación de realismo convencional y experimentación con la forma». Edmundo Paz Soldán, El País «Ficción de la más alta calidad. [...] Conmovedora. [...] Una lectura obligada». The Sunday Times «Una novela juguetona a la vez que seria, compleja a la vez que directa. [...] Una de las prosas más efervescentes del momento». The Daily Telegraph «Una gran obra, valiente y arriesgada». Scotsman «Salvajemente ambiciosa. [...] Un tour de force [...]. La música es a la vez tema y metáfora cuando Egan explora la mutabilidad del tiempo, el destino y la responsabilidad individual sobre la tecnología». O, The Oprah Magazine «El libro de Egan es una muestra de diferentes épocas (los días de gloria del punk; un futuro socialmente interconectado) y estilos (sátira astuta, tragedia conmovedora, incluso PowerPoint) para explorar la interacción entre la música y los duros ritmos de la vida». Vogue «Más allá de todas sus florituras posmodernas, El tiempo es un canalla es tan tradicional como una novela de Dickens [...]. El objetivo [de Egan] no es tanto explotar la narrativa tradicional como explorar cómo responde a las oportunidades de presión de la era digital». Newsweek

Uno de los 10 mejores libros del año según The New York Times. La culminación de un gran proyecto narrativo iniciado con El tiempo es un canalla (Premio Pulitzer) La casa de caramelo, que culmina el ambicioso proyecto narrativo de Jennifer Egan iniciado con El tiempo es un canalla (Premio Pulitzer en 2011), cuenta la historia de Bix Bouton, un brillante empresario informático en horas bajas que acaba patentando una exitosa herramienta tecnológica que permite acceder a nuestros recuerdos y compartirlos, y que ha seducido a miles de personas. Con una asombrosa variedad de recursos narrativos, Egan pone el foco en el mundo digital y de las redes sociales y nos cuenta la historia de diversos personajes que buscan una conexión real en un mundo cada vez más digitalizado e hiperconectado. La crítica ha dicho: «Un trepidante paseo polifónico por Estados Unidos en las garras de una tecnología que permite a los demás introducirse en tu mente». Margaret Atwood «Una novela compleja para un mundo complejo e hiperconectado. [...] Una novela que se ajusta a la época como un guante, sin renunciar a lo importante: la literatura». El Mundo «Una auténtica golosina». El Periódico «Un festín literario». El Periódico de Extremadura «¿Ha escrito Jennifer Egan la Gran Novela Americana de la era de las redes sociales? [...] La casa de caramelo permanece fiel a ese peculiar estilo poliédrico con el que Egan consigue adaptar la forma al contenido de una era de la dispersión». The Objective « La casa de caramelo y El tiempo es un canalla son las novelas neoyorquinas y tecnológicas más importantes de nuestro tiempo». The New York Times «Una hazaña increíble. [...] Que empiece el culto». New York Times Book Review «Trasciende mundos y dimensiones mientras examina lo que ocurre cuando nuestros recuerdos se ponen a disposición del consumo de otros. [...] Una lectura compleja y convincente que muestra el talento narrativo de Egan». TIME «Compuesta por piezas cortas interconectadas, [...] está unida por la omnipresencia de una tecnología de ciencia ficción que no parece tan alejada de nuestra realidad actual». VOGUE «Una brillante demostración de los placeres incuantificables de la gran ficción». The Washington Post «El mejor libro de Jennifer Egan hasta la fecha». Publishers Weekly «Una novela contundente y fragmentada sobre un futuro aterradoramente posible». Library Journal «Una hermosa indagación sobre la pérdida, la memoria y la historia, una crítica sobre lo que se pierde cuando vivimos nuestras vidas en línea». The San Francisco Chronicle «Profundo. Egan explora con brillantez las vidas interconectadas de quienes abrazan la tecnología y de quienes la rechazan por completo. Hipnótico». People «Una obra de ficción especulativa maravillosa y de gran inventiva». Booklist «Tan apasionante y estimulante que exige ser leída y releída». Kirkus Reviews

Sasha a une petite trentaine. Elle vivote à New York, après avoir quitté son poste d’assistante de production dans une grande maison de disques. On la découvre sur le canapé de son psychothérapeute, tentant de régler son problème de kleptomanie et de remettre de l’ordre dans sa vie. Sans amis, sans travail, elle est une âme solitaire et prédatrice. Bennie, lui, a la quarantaine passée. Ancien producteur star des Conduits, un groupe de rock emblématique, il se contente désormais d’éditer des tubes insipides. Divorcé, il essaie d’entretenir des liens avec son fils, sans trop y parvenir. Déprimé, il n’arrive même plus à avoir la moindre érection. D’une écriture acérée, Jennifer Egan nous plonge dans la conscience et l’histoire de ces deux personnages dont les chemins un jour se sont croisés. Jeune homme timide, Bennie se passionna pour le punk, dans un San Francisco débridé. Adolescente au tempérament fougueux, Sasha partit pour Naples afin d’oublier des parents destructeurs. Une foule de personnages jalonnent leur existence, qu’il s’agisse de Lou Kline, le mentor allumé de la bande, ou de l’oncle de Sasha, un homme au bord du gouffre. Ces histoires de vie s’enchaînent, des personnalités très fortes se dégagent, une véritable tension naît autour de leurs destinées. En restituant le passage du temps et les aléas du désir, Jennifer Egan ausculte notre capacité à avancer et à devenir ce que nous sommes, sans rien nier du passé.

Par l''autrice de Qu''avons nous fait de nos rêves ? - Prix Pulitzer 2011 " Le meilleur livre d''Egan à ce jour. " Publishers Weekly Bix Bouton a 40 ans, quatre enfants, et en apparence tout pour être heureux. Son entreprise, Mandala, connaît un succès tel qu''il est devenu l''un de ces " demi-dieux de la technologie " admirés de tous. Pourtant, il est tourmenté, insatisfait, en quête désespérée d''une nouvelle idée – jusqu''au jour où il tombe par hasard sur un groupe de discussion dont l''un des membres, professeur à l''université, expérimente un nouveau concept : l''externalisation de la mémoire. Nous sommes en 2010. En l''espace d''une décennie, OwnYourUnconscious, la nouvelle technologie développée par l''entreprise de Bix permettant non seulement d''accéder à tous ses souvenirs mais aussi de les partager en échange de l''accès à ceux des autres, a séduit les foules. Mais à quel prix ? Roman miroir de Qu''avons-nous fait de nos rêves ?, prix Pulitzer 2011, La Maison en pain d''épices est un récit électrisant, foisonnant et terriblement actuel sur la quête d''authenticité, de lien et de sens dans un monde où la mémoire et les identités ne nous appartiennent plus.

Kiehtova Pulitzer-palkittu romaani Newyorkilainen Sasha työskentelee levy-yhtiössä johtaja Bennie Salazarin assistenttina. Romaanin alussa hän on ensitreffeillä Alex-nimisen miehen kanssa ja yrittää hillitä kleptomaanisia taipumuksiaan. Toisaalla Bennie kipuilee avioeroa, musiikkibisneksen muutoksia ja vanhenemista. Toista oli villi nuoruus San Franciscon punk-piireissä! Kaikki romaanin tapahtumat liittyvät tavalla tai toisella Sashaan ja Bennieen: käydään Hemingway-henkisellä safarilla 70-luvun Afrikassa, kiillotetaan trooppista diktatuuria hirmuhallinnoivan kenraalin julkisuuskuvaa, tutustutaan Napolin alamaailmaan, väijytään tähtiä New Yorkin Keskuspuistossa ja luetaan tulevaisuuden teinitytön powerpoint-muotoista päiväkirjaa. Aika suuri hämäys on hauska, raikas ja yllätyksellinen lukukokemus yhdeltä tämän hetken puhutuimmalta amerikkalaiskirjailijalta. Kirjan henkilökaarti on herkullisen värikäs ja mittava, ja ajallisesti liikutaan 1970-luvulta 2020-luvulle. Romaani rikkoo iloisesti lajityyppejä ja sen kehämäisen rakenteen voisi ajatella muistuttavan Facebookia. Jennifer Eganin romaani kahmi ilmestyessään lukuisia palkintoja: Pulitzerin ja National Book Critics Circle Awardin sekä New York Timesin vuoden 2010 paras kirja -maininnan. Lisäksi se oli ehdolla Orange- ja PEN/Faulkner-palkintojen saajaksi.

Considerado uma obra “irmã” de A visita cruel do tempo, novo livro da autora fala sobre a busca de autenticidade e sentido em um mundo altamente tecnológico Em 2010, em A visita cruel do tempo, Jennifer Egan criou um romance conceitual e caleidoscópico que conquistou o público e a crítica, vencendo os mais prestigiosos prêmios de literatura. A complexa rede de personagens — todos de alguma forma conectados com a indústria fonográfica — permitiu a Egan misturar diferentes técnicas narrativas, inclusive um capítulo todo feito em slides de PowerPoint, que tornaram o livro um fenômeno mundial. Em A casa de doces, a autora retoma vários personagens secundários daquela história, a começar por Bix Bouton. Incrivelmente brilhante, Bix é um empresário de sucesso, conhecido por todos como um “semideus da tecnologia”. Mas, aos 40 anos, ele está exausto e desesperado por uma nova ideia. Até que se depara com um debate entre professores da Universidade de Columbia e descobre que um deles está pesquisando a “externalização” da memória humana. Em 2020, a nova ferramenta de Bix, Domine Seu Inconsciente — que acessa todas as memórias do ser humano e permite compartilhá-las em troca do acesso às memórias de outras pessoas —, já seduziu multidões. Mas nem todos se renderam aos seus encantos. Em uma teia fascinante, acompanhamos as consequências dessa assustadora tecnologia na vida de vários personagens, cujos caminhos se cruzam em diferentes momentos ao longo de décadas. Mestre em manipular com precisão uma variedade de vozes e estilos, Jennifer Egan retrata em A casa de doces um mundo que não está tão distante de nossa realidade.