**PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • PEN/FAULKNER AWARD WINNER • INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of his generation’s greatest writers comes the sequel to *The Sportswriter,* starring Frank Bascombe, who “has earned a place beside Willy Loman and Harry Angstrom in our literary landscape … with a wry wit and a fin de siècle wisdom that is very much his own” ( *The New York Times Book Review* ). ** Frank Bascombe, in the aftermath of his divorce and the ruin of his career, has entered an Existence Period, selling real estate in Haddam, 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 astonishing empathy and perception.