American · b. 1964
Jonathan Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1964. He published his first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, in 1994, a detective story set in a future where animals talk and questions are illegal. His breakthrough came with Motherless Brooklyn (1999), a detective novel narrated by a man with Tourette syndrome, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Fortress of Solitude (2003), about two boys growing up in 1970s Brooklyn, became a bestseller. Other books include Chronic City, Dissident Gardens, Girl in Landscape and the essay collection The Disappointment Artist. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. Lethem mixes science fiction, crime and literary realism, and writes often about New York, music and pop culture. He has taught creative writing at Pomona College in California.