"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is Jonathan Safran Foer's heartrending New York novel.

In a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key...The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that.

But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?

So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives and complete strangers.

He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years.

But will it take him any closer to, or even further from, his lost father?

Moving, literary and innovative, perfect for fans of Lorrie Moore and Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" was made into a major film starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, released in 2012.

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977. He is the author of "Everything is Illuminated", which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Guardian First Book award, and "Eating Animals", and the editor of "A Convergence of Birds".