Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar Schell is nine years old, extremely intelligent, and grieving the death of his father, who was in the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. One day, searching his father’s closet, he finds a key inside an envelope with the name ‘Black’ written on it. There are one hundred and sixty-two people named Black in New York City’s five boroughs. Oskar resolves to visit every single one and find the lock the key fits.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel is formally as inventive as his first: it incorporates photographs, handwriting, unusual typography, and a grandmother’s letters alongside Oskar’s unforgettable first-person narration. Oskar’s voice — encyclopaedic, anxious, funny, and heartbreakingly transparent in its grief — is one of contemporary fiction’s great achievements. His journey across New York is a portrait of a city and a community recovering from catastrophe, and a study of what it means to mourn someone you cannot stop loving.

A novel of extraordinary emotional power and formal intelligence. One of the most important American novels about 9/11 — and about what it means to lose a father. Published by Penguin.