Here I Am

A monumental new novel from the bestselling author of" Everything Is Illuminated" and" Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, Abraham! to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, Here I am. Later, when Isaac calls out, My father! to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, Here I am.
How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others ? These are the questions at the heart of Jonathan Safran Foer s first novel in eleven years--a work of extraordinary scope and heartbreaking intimacy.

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks, in present-day Washington, D.C., "Here I Am" is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the very meaning of home--and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.
Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers and critics loved in his earlier work, " Here I Am "is Foer s most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet. It not only confirms Foer s stature as a dazzling literary talent but reveals a mature novelist who has fully come into his own as one of the most important writers of his generation."

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the bestseller Everything Is Illuminated, named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the winner of numerous awards, including the Guardian First Book Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Prize. Foer was one of Rolling Stone's "People of the Year" and Esquire's "Best and Brightest." Foreign rights to his new novel have already been sold in ten countries. The film of Everything Is Illuminated, directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood, will be released in August 2005. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been optioned for film by Scott Rudin Productions in conjunction with Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures. Foer lives in Brooklyn, New York.