Read An Excerpt From American Author Jonathan Franzen's Upcoming 5th Novel Titled 'Purity'

Jonathan Franzen, the celebrated American writer behind the novels The Corrections (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) and Freedom (winner of the John Gardner Fiction Award) is back with a brand new book that is scheduled for a September release this year. The book carries the title Purity and is a "grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder".

The novel's synopsis tells us that it's about a young girl named Pip Taylor. Her real name is Purity. She is wallowing in student debt amounting to $130,000. She is living with anarchists in Oakland. She has a hazardous relationship with her mother. She doesn't know who her father is. Indeed, she has a lot of issues in her hands. As if these aren't enough, Pip encounters a German peace activist who puts even more issues in her hands.

Get a taste of what the novel has to offer by reading an excerpt from the book that Franzen published on The New Yorker magazine. Read the excerpt here. It's called The Republic of Bad Taste.

Franzen is also the author of The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion. Learn more about the author here.