David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest (1996) is a critically acclaimed novel written by David Foster Wallace. This lengthy and complex work takes place in a hypothetical Boston, Massachusetts of the near future. While the novel touches on topics as diverse as tennis, substance addiction, recovery programs, child abuse, advertising and pop culture, it is at its heart a series of meditations on self-awareness and the corrosive effects that modernity, irony and ambition have on the individual. In theme, scale and structure, the novel evokes earlier works from Hamlet to Finnegans Wake.