Independence Day

Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an 'Existence Period' - selling real estate in New Jersey and mastering the high-wire act of normalcy. But over one Fourth of July weekend, Frank is called into sudden, bewildering engagement with life.Independence Day is a moving, peerlessly funny odyssey through America and through the layered consciousness of one of its most compelling literary incarnations, conducted by a novelist of extraordinary empathy and perception.Winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.“'The best novel out of America in many years, a funny, achingly sad account of a father's disastrous outing with his son - and much else besides ... Simply, a masterpiece'” –  John Banville, Guardian“'Ford's mature prose style, with its long, sinuous, lavishly articulate sentences, is now one of the glories of modern American writing'” –  Jonathan Raban, Observer