New Jonathan Franzen Novel “Crossroads” Slated for 2021

It's the first volume in a trilogy

author Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen presents his novel "Purity" on stage at the Thalia theatre in Hamburg, Germany in 2015.
Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images

Jonathan Franzen is the author of large, multifaceted novels that explore elements of contemporary America. Jonathan Franzen is an enthusiast for all things avian. And, as it turns out, Jonathan Franzen has a new novel due out next year, titled Crossroads, and it’s the first volume in a trilogy.

Temple has written a longer breakdown of the announcement on Literary Hub, including the information that the trilogy’s title might be an homage to George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

Franzen’s publisher has provided some information on the book, including the fact that Crossroads follows a Chicago-area family dealing with crises personal and societal in 1971. The description also offers a sense of what to expect from the trilogy as a whole: “By turns comic and harrowing, a tour-de-force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, Crossroads is the first volume of a trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, that will span three generations and trace the inner life of our culture through the present day. “

Franzen has spoken about his own fondness for trilogies as a reader. “Everything I loved as a young person I read three or four times,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “This included The Lord of the Rings and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.” Readers will get a glimpse of Franzen’s first foray into multi-volume storytelling on October 5, 2021 — that’s when Crossroads is set for release.

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