Čistoća

"Purity", the title of Jonathan Franzen's new novel, is both the meaning of the main character's name (Purity) and a concept that takes on many forms in the novel.

Purity Pip Tyler lives as a squatter in Oakland, burdened with student loans, and her only family is her mother. Raised in almost complete isolation, she does not know her mother's real identity or who her father is, and fears that she will never have a normal life.

Socializing with anarchists from Germany takes Pip to South America, where she begins working as an intern for the Sun Project, a hacker group similar to WikiLeaks. Pip hopes to discover the secret of her origins there. The group is led by the charismatic Andreas Wolf, who spent his youth in East Germany and became famous during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although much older than her, Wolf shows affection for Pip, and a special and intense relationship develops between them.

This story branches into the past and present, in seven interconnected parts of the book, which are told through the prisms of different characters. In doing so, Franzen creates a world of original and unforgettable characters – journalists, leakers, lovers and spouses, bad writers, careerists, tragedians.

Almost every character in the novel seeks "purity" in some form, and the questioning of truth and lies, of the pure and the polluted occurs on many levels of their existence and mutual relationships.

"Purity" is a complex, but skillfully controlled novel about big themes (life under communism and the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the exposure of privacy in the era of the Internet, corruption scandals in high politics, the toxicity of a culture obsessed with fame). However, at the very heart of the novel pulsate much more intimate problems and themes: failed marriages, broken friendships, painful childhoods, sexual fantasies and perversions, moments when we face our own demons, madness and chaos. All the characters in the novel carry some secret, shame, and guilt of their own, and Franzen himself called "Purity" a book about our bruises and injuries.

With this novel, Franzen once again demonstrated that he is an exceptional storyteller who penetrates the painful points of today and our existence, powerfully, humorously, and with a refined dose of irony.