乔纳森·勒瑟姆 Jonathan Lethem，1964年出生于纽约布鲁克林。年少时，他沉迷于鲍勃·迪伦的音乐，钟情于《星球大战》，读过菲利普·迪克的全部小说。1982年，勒瑟姆从本宁顿学院退学，怀揣四十美元，从科罗拉多搭便车穿越一千多里的荒漠与山岭，来到加利福尼亚。在加利福尼亚，他为一家二手书店工作，同时开始了他的文学写作。

勒瑟姆是美国当代最具创造力、最受瞩目的作家之一。他的作品杂糅了科幻、推理的元素，又能推陈出新，突破类型小说的限制，将纯文学与通俗文学完美地融合在一起。不仅深受读者欢迎，时常荣登《纽约时报》畅销榜，也获得了美国国家图书奖、世界奇幻奖、金匕首奖、麦克阿瑟奖等众多大奖。主要作品有《枪，偶尔有音乐》、《布鲁克林孤儿》、《孤独堡垒》、《久病之城》等。

From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel. Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.