Photo: Janet Fine
Datum
vr. 23 sep.
Tijd
20:00 - 23:00
Locatie
Dom Church Utrecht
Prijs
€22,50 / €18 (members receive a 20% discount)
Word member
Voertaal
English
Koop tickets

ILFU Book Talk: Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen will open the ILFU on 23 September.

Datum
vr. 23 sep.
Tijd
20:00 - 23:00
Locatie
Dom Church Utrecht
Prijs
€22,50 / €18 (members receive a 20% discount)
Word member
Voertaal
English
Koop tickets

None other than celebrated author Jonathan Franzen will be visiting Utrecht on September 23rd to attend the festive opening ceremony of ILFU 2022. We talked with Franzen online last year on the day his latest novel Crossroads was released, because he couldn’t travel due to the coronavirus restrictions. This year he’ll be on the podium in Utrecht, live and in person, to talk about Crossroads, his previous novels, and fiction’s relevance to our time. Jonathan Franzen will be interviewed by Hans Bouman.


We’re honoured to have Jonathan Franzen opening the ILFU on 23 September. So note the date in your agenda. Ticket are on sale.


Crossroads tells the story of a Midwestern American family at the crossroads of a moral crisis. As in all of his novels, in Crossroads Franzen once again succeeds in merging a small, private family drama with the larger societal narrative. De Volkskrant chose the book as the best novel of 2021. According to Books Editor Wilma de Rek, Crossroads is a novel of the ‘old-fashioned strain’: entirely fictitious. “The characterisations of the five protagonists are phenomenal, as is the way he interweaves the five different story lines.” 

"As a writer you need to have drama, and family is a good way to get there quickly"

You can watch a fragment from our online conversation here, in which Jonathan Franzen explains why it is so important for him to meticulously figure out the family relations in his novels.

Watch