The Twenty-Seventh City

The Twenty-Seventh City
Jonathan Franzen

St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city's leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, ‘The Twenty-Seventh City’ shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, and the American Dream unraveling into terror and dark comedy.

The TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY

Jonathan Franzen

Copyright (#ulink_324552c1-c0cb-5538-b86e-b485a4a6d4af)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © Jonathan Franzen 1988

Cover design and illustration by Richard Bravery

Jonathan Franzen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The author is grateful for permission to quote the following copyrighted works: ‘The Red Wheel-Barrow’ from William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems 1909–1939, Volume I, copyright 1938. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Limited. The ‘Chicken of the Sea’ jingle, reprinted by permission of Tri-Union Seafoods, LLC.

The author wishes to thank the Artists Foundation of Boston and the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities for their support in 1986

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9781841157481

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780007383245

Version: 2017-11-27

Praise (#ulink_6013e19f-114d-5caa-84ea-accc1a0f8bd9)

‘A huge and masterly drama… gripping and surreal and overwhelmingly convincing’

Newsweek

‘Permeated with intelligence, beauty, and subversive humor, teeming with life, always on the edge of igniting from its own repressed energy… Franzen is an extravagantly talented writer’

Chicago Tribune

‘Franzen’s tour de force (to call it a “first novel” is to do it an injustice) is a sinister fun-house-mirror reflection of urban America in the 1980s… There’s a lot of reality out there. The Twenty-Seventh City, in its larger-than-life way, is a brave and exhilarating attempt to master it’

Seattle Times

‘Franzen goes for broke here – he’s out to expose the soul of a city and all the bloody details of the way we live… A book of range, pith, intelligence’

Vogue

‘Mr Franzen has talent to spare. His is a worthwhile entertainment, this picaresque tale the principal vagabond of which is its own sinuous plot’

Wall Street Journal

Dedication (#ulink_1c6faa3e-db32-5639-978b-36b6f26fc9af)

To my parents

Contents

Cover (#u9fe22ac3-d90c-5406-a4b3-af0ecc76b28c)

Title Page (#u8f6d1c21-c6d3-5ed8-9317-fb22b852c690)

Copyright (#u89cd8fd0-c477-5e9c-a72a-92b7b291fc1a)

Praise (#udc64c1bb-9d98-53f3-9482-5ac2dfc71a49)

Dedication (#uc4d4e773-e8ff-5e0d-bf9c-7a6dc501db26)

Map (#uc38cdf51-1910-5da9-8621-e66df9aa7302)

Chapter 1 (#u171254de-7bb1-5e27-9855-6163cb19cfa9)

Chapter 2 (#u9bc81af2-0005-5af6-aa1d-f777f454c55e)

Chapter 3 (#u5207f9a1-b3ae-5660-84ae-52621c088945)

Chapter 4 (#u2e54f291-7997-5a61-a267-d6db49ee875b)

Chapter 5 (#uf43bf360-4151-5c7f-8179-5b8cd45564ce)

Chapter 6 (#u7a5cb326-5082-5702-8f18-3cf7b601f48f)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)