Conversation moderated by Will Evans, founder of Deep Vellum Publishing, co-founder of Cinestate and Deep Vellum Books.
Jonathan Safran Foer is back at it again, asking some of life’s most probing questions about identity and the meaning of home in his first novel in eleven years, Here I Am.
This high-energy and emotionally charged novel unfolds over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, DC, and tells the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As a catastrophic earthquake exacerbates tensions in the Middle East, the Bloch family is forced to evaluate the disparities between the lives they are living and the lives they think they want. Through one family’s journey, Foer asks his readers to contemplate how we reconcile our various roles in society to claim an identity that is all our own. How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult; Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others?
Foer is the author of two bestselling, award-winning novels, Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and a bestselling work of nonfiction, Eating Animals. Among his many accomplishments, Foer was included in the New Yorker magazine’s “20 Under 40” list of writers and Esquire’s “Best and Brightest.” He currently teaches creative writing at New York University.