Here I Am

Here I Am is an exuberantly funny and deeply moving novel about family, identity and navigating modern life...


The New York Times bestselling new novel about modern family lives -- from the author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jacob and Julia Bloch are about to be tested . . .

By Jacob's grandfather, who won't go quietly into a retirement home.

By the family reunion, that everyone is dreading.

By their son's heroic attempts to get expelled.

And by the sexting affair that will rock their marriage.

A typical modern American family, the Blochs cling together even as they are torn apart. Which is when catastrophe decides to strike . . .

Confronting the enduring question of what it means to be human with inventiveness, playfulness and compassion, Here I Am is a great American family novel for our times, a masterpiece about how we live now.


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."