Photo

Jonathan Franzen’s fans will have plenty to read next year. There’s a forthcoming biography of the author by Philip Weinstein, an English professor at Swarthmore College. And in September, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will release Mr. Franzen’s fifth novel, “Purity.”

Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, described “Purity” as a multigenerational American epic that spans decades and continents. The story centers on a young woman named Purity Tyler, or Pip, who doesn’t know who her father is and sets out to uncover his identity. The narrative stretches from contemporary America to South America to East Germany before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and hinges on the mystery of Pip’s family history and her relationship with a charismatic hacker and whistleblower.

Like Mr. Franzen’s best-sellers “Freedom” and “The Corrections,” which have each sold well over a million copies, his new novel tackles big themes like sexual politics, love and parenthood. But the novel also marks a stylistic departure for Mr. Franzen, Mr. Galassi said.

“There’s a kind of fabulist quality to it,” he said. “It’s not strict realism. There’s a kind of mythic undertone to the story.”

Mr. Franzen, who has a famously tortured creative temperament, spent the last two years working intensely on “Purity,” Mr. Galassi said. It’s his first novel since “Freedom” came out in 2010, though he’s published an essay collection and a translation of essays by the author Karl Kraus in the interim.

Mr. Weinstein’s biography, titled “Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage,” will explore “Franzen’s metamorphoses as a person and as a writer” and includes an analysis of “Purity.” It was written with Mr. Franzen’s consent and cooperation, Mr. Weinstein said.