extremely loud and incredibly close book

While rummaging through his dad’s things, Oskar comes across an envelope in his dad’s closet with a key inside of it. His dad left a series of messages on the answering machine prior to the towers falling, adding guilt to Oskar’s grief because he didn’t pick up the final call right before the towers came down. While Oskar is extremely intelligent, he’s also clearly on the autistic spectrum and doesn’t process things like everyone else. He subsequently died in the attacks, though his body was never recovered, and the book centers around Oskar’s peculiar way of dealing with his sudden grief. Oskar’s dad owned a jewelry store and had a meeting at the World Trade Center the morning of Sept. The novel follows multiple interconnected storylines, and is filled with odd additions that give it a surreal format both lauded and panned by critics. The protagonist is 8-year-old Oskar Schell, who learns how to deal with the death of his father in the attack on the World Trade Center. To date, he has published four novels and three works of nonfiction.Įxtremely Loud & Incredibly Close is Safran Foer’s second novel, using the events of the 9/11 terrorist attack as the backdrop for the story. “My life really changed after that,” he said later.Īfter graduating from Princeton in 1999, Safran Foer briefly attended medical school before dropping out to pursue his writing career full time. Safran Foer took an introductory writing course with Joyce Carol Oates, who took an interest in his writing. As a result, Safran Foer always felt like he wanted to be “outside his own skin.” and was a self-described “flamboyant” and “sensitive” child who said he suffered, “something like a nervous breakdown” after a chemical accident in his classroom at the age of 8. Safran Foer was born into a Jewish family in Washington, D.C. In an attempt to shed light on this development, I have pledged to read all 26 books banned last year in Idaho and share with our readers what they are all about, why they were likely banned and what we are missing by promoting censorship of the written word.Īmerican novelist Jonathan Safran Foer is perhaps best known for his debut novel Everything is Illuminated, released in 2002, but is slowly gaining more recognition for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close after it has been recognized as one of the most banned books in America during the last decade.

In Idaho, 26 titles were banned across three school districts, underscoring a trend spearheaded largely by right-wing religious groups pushing for censorship of books that feature LGBTQ+ characters, as well as sexual and racial situations they deem inappropriate for children. More than 1,600 books across 32 states were banned during the 2021-2022 school year.

Extremely loud and incredibly close book