The debut novel, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris was translated into 24 different languages, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award. Written in the stylistically challenging first-person plural, the novel captured the desperation of office workers as they faced downturns and layoffs in their company. In his new novel The Unnamed, Ferris follows a man who had the perfect job and the perfect family, until his undiagnosable disease, which forces him to drop what he is doing at any given moment and walk aimlessly for days on end, threatens to destroy them both.

Jonathan Dee is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, and the former senior editor of The Paris Review. He is the author of four previous novels, including Palladio. From advertising's corrosive impact on society to the frenzy caused by media and celebrity, Dee ''is the kind of writer who thinks hard about contemporary realities and then builds sturdy, stately novels of ideas around them'' (New York Times). Of The Privileges, Dee's new novel, author Jonathan Franzen writes, ''Mr. Dee has given us a cunning, seductive novel about the people we thought we'd all agreed to hate. His case study of American mega-wealth is delicious.'' (recorded 1/28/2010)