Jonathan Earl Franzen was born on August 17, 1959 in Western Springs, IL. He
is a linguist, research assistant, birdwatcher, and writer of short stories, essays
and novels. He has written at least six books in the genre of social realism.
The Corrections was published in 2001. It is a novel about Alfred and Enid Lambert,
who raise their three children in the Midwest beginning in the middle of the 20th
Century. It follows to explain what happens to them and their children as they and
the times change. The novel won the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and
the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. From AudioFile: "This is serious fiction,
meant to delineate our moral agonies. Expect to be transported, but don't
expect to escape."