Jonathan Allen Lethem (photo ©David Shankbone) was born on February 19, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York.

Jonathan Lethem grew up in a commune in the area then called North Gowanus, now Boerum Hill. His father was an avant-garde painter and his mother an activist. He called his childhood bohemian and it had an influence on him from the cultural point of view too. His mother died when he was 13 years old, another event that influenced him when he became a writer.

Initially, Jonathan Lethem wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps so he studied at the High School of Music & Art in New York. Later, he went to Bennington College in Vermont, where, however, he found himself having to deal with a completely different reality and realized that he was interested in writing. In 1984 he went to Berkeley, California, where he settled until 1996, working in a bookstore that sold used books.

Jonathan Lethem started publishing short stories in 1989 and for some years published short fiction. In 1984 he published his first novel, “Gun, With Occasional Music“, a mix of hard-boiled and science fiction that shows the influence of Philip K. Dick, a writer Lethem is a big fan of. Thanks to the money received ​​for the rights to the story to make a movie, the author was able to leave his job in the bookstore and devote himself to writing full-time.

In 1995, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “Amnesia Moon”, obtained by reworking some earlier stories never published. It’s an apocalyptic science fiction novel still showing the inspiration to Philip K. Dick with also some explicit homages. It’s also an on-the-road story inspired by Lethem’s hitchhiking trips.

In 1997, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “As She Climbed Across the Table”, a science fiction satire set on the campus of a fictional university. The story centers around the relationship between a physicist who falls in love with a spatial anomaly and her ex-partner who was dumped for that reason.

In 1998, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “Girl in Landscape”, set in a near future in which the consequences of climate change have become very heavy. The author keeps on using many science fiction elements mixing them with other genres, in this case, inspired by John Ford’s western movie “The Searchers”.

In 1999, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “Motherless Brooklyn”, a thriller with a protagonist who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome and is obsessed with language. The novel won the “National Book Critics Circle Award”, the “Macallan Gold Dagger” and the “Salon Book Award”. It was also named Book of the Year by “Esquire”.

In 2003, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “The Fortress of Solitude”, a semi-autobiographical story set in Brooklyn between the ’70s and ’90s, which addresses issues such as racism, drugs, music, comics, and graffiti art.

In 2007, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “You Do not Love Me Yet”, a comic novel about alternative music with a strong erotic element. The author was inspired by his years as the lead singer of a band in California in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Between October 2007 and July 2008, Jonathan Lethem published a series of graphic novels about “Omega the Unknown”, which reprises a series of old comic books of the ’70s.

In 2009, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “Chronic City”, which contains many influences ranging from Saul Bellow to Philip K. Dick, from Charles Finley to Alfred Hitchcock.

In 2009, a short story by Jonathan Lethem was adapted into the movie “Light and the Sufferer”.

In 2011, Jonathan Lethem was one of the editors of “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick”, a book that brings together a selection of writings by the great author in which he explores his religious and visionary experiences.

In 2013, Jonathan Lethem published the novel “Dissident Gardens”, a multigenerational saga of revolutionaries and activists. This story with strong political overtones is set between the ’30s of the 20th century and the present jumping back and forth through time in the various chapters.

In the course of his life, Jonathan Lethem has been married three times: to the artist Shelley Jackson from 1987 to 1997, to Julia Rosenberg from 2000 to 2002, and from 2004 to Amy Barrett, with whom in 2007 he had a son, Everett Barrett Lethem.

Jonathan Lethem manages to mix various literary genres in a truly unique way. It’s therefore impossible to predict what his next novel will be like. Being surprised is part of the pleasure of reading this author.