Tropic of Capricorn (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Miller, Henry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141399147 ISBN 13: 9780141399140

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2015

Synopsis

A cult modern classic, Tropic of Capricorn is as daring, frank and influential as Henry Miller first novel, Tropic of Cancer -- new to Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by Tracey Emin

A story of sexual and spiritual awakening, Tropic of Capricorn shocked readers when it was published in 1939. A mixture of fiction and autobiography, it is the story of Henry V. Miller who works for the Cosmodemonic telegraph company in New York in the 1920s and tries to write the most important work of literature that was ever published. Tropic of Capricorn paints a dazzling picture of the life of the writer and of New York City between the wars: the skyscrapers and the sewers, the lust and the dejection, the smells and the sounds of a city that is perpetually in motion, threatening to swallow everyone and everything.

'Literature begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done' Lawrence Durrell

'The only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past' George Orwell

'The greatest American writer' Bob Dylan

Henry Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. His best-known novels include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, 1949, Plexus, 1953, and Nexus, 1959), all published in France and banned in the US and the UK until 1964. He is widely recognised as an irreverent, risk-taking writer who redefined the novel and made the link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat generation.

About this title

Review:

American Literature begins and ends with the meaning of what Miller has done (Lawrence Durrell)

The only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past (George Orwell)

The greatest American writer (Bob Dylan)

There is nothing like Henry Miller when he gets rolling... One has to take the English language back to Marlowe and Shakespeare before encountering a wealth of imagery equal in intensity... a wildwater of prose, a cataract, a volcano, a torrent, an earthquake... a writer finally like a great athlete, a phenomenon of an avatar of literary energy (Norman Mailer)

Henry is like a mythical animal. His writing is flamboyant, torrential, chaotic, treacherous, and dangerous (Anais Nin)

From the Back Cover:

A riotous and explosive mixture of joys and frustrations, 'Tropic of Capricorn' chronicles Miller's early life in New York, from his repressive Brooklyn childhood spent amongst 'a galaxy of screwballs' to frantic, hilarious years of dead-end jobs and innumerable erotic adventures. Irreverent and ironic, 'Tropic of Capricorn' is both a comic portrait of the irrepressible Miller himself and a scathing attack on respectable America, the very foundations of which he hoped to shatter.

Publication of 'Tropic of Capricorn' and its sister-volume 'Tropic of Cancer' in Paris in the 1930s was hailed by Samuel Beckett as 'a momentous event in the history of modern writing'. The books were subsequently banned in the UK and the USA for nearly thirty years.

"The world of Capricorn is peopled by eccentrics and nymphomaniacs, to say nothing of the incorrigibly eccentric Miller himself. There is also a memorable portrait of his father, a delicate account of childhood, and savage, humane comedy in the bedlam of an employment office. The rest: fornication and anarchism, sometimes very funny, always rich, exultant and honest"
SUNDAY TIMES

"In the course of 'Tropic of Capricorn', Miller as a Miss Lonelyhearts of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, hires and fires an inexhaustible queue of ex-convicts and whores who turn the office into a hive of degradation. Miller lives constantly at the flashpoint of violence, which he manages to convert to comedy without undermining the anger"
OBSERVER

"'Tropic of Capricorn' is a teeming frieze of fights, copulations and epiphanies. The emphasis is on the mysterious value of ordinary life, not its futility"
NEW STATESMAN

"A superb entertainment"
NEW YORK TIMES

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0141399147
• ISBN 13: 9780141399140
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320