This book delivers the intimate memoir of Franzens growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an excruciating and strangely happy adolescence, and into his adult life with embarrassing and unexpected passions.

This book delivers the intimate memoir of Franzens growth from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," through an excruciating and strangely happy adolescence, and into his adult life with embarrassing and unexpected passions.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen's tale of growing up, squirming in his own über-sensitive skin, from a small and fundamentally ridiculous person, into an adult with strong inconvenient passions. Whether he's writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka's fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between bird watching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelingly engaged with the world we live in now. The Discomfort Zone is a wise, funny, and gorgeously written self-portrait by one of America's finest writers.