Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander discuss The New American Haggadah, their take on a traditional Passover prayer book. The Haggadah recounts, through prayer, song, and ritual, the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Safran Foer edited Englander's translation, and major Jewish writers and thinkers like Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch also provide commentary. It is designed and illustrated by the Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer.

Our summer book club continues today with host John Hockenberry's first pick for August. John sees summer reading as an opportunity for challenge. He spent one summer reading the Russian literature, and the following summer he devoted his reading to Charles Dickens. This summer, as the tenth anniversary of September 11 approaches, John decided it was time to tackle a few of the recent novels that deal with that tragic day. His first pick is Jonathan Safran Foer’s "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." The novel follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell in the years after his father dies in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Foer sat down with John to discuss his 2005 novel.

J.D. Salinger, author of "The Catcher in the Rye," died yesterday at age 91. The critically acclaimed novel about teenage angst shocked and inspired the world of literature for decades, while its author refused interviews and eventually withdrew to a small town in New Hampshire.

Upcoming event with Jonathan Safran Foer: November 16, 2009 Barnes and Noble ...