From Bondage - Softcover

Henry Roth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753800047 ISBN 13: 9780753800041

Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 1997

Synopsis

'A landmark of the American literary century' Boston Globe Sixty years after the publication of his great modernist masterpiece, Call It Sleep, Henry Roth returned with Mercy of a Rude Stream - a sequence of four internationally-acclaimed epic novels of immigrant life in early-twentieth century New York.Written in the last year of Roth's life, this is the impassioned story of a young man's love affair with literature, and with his teacher. As Ira Stigman turns from his incestuous childhood affairs, he finds himself competing with his best friend for the attention of their literature professor. FROM BONDAGE is the the moving culmination of a great writer's life. 'The literary comeback of the century' Vanity Fair 'As unquenchably vibrant with life as the immigrants whose existence it commemorates' Sunday Times 'A dynamic and moving event . . . a stirring portrait of a vanished culture . . . a poignant chapter in the life-drama of a unique American writer' Newsweek 'Although it is sixty years since a new novel by Mr Roth last hit the bookshelves, it has been worth the wait' The Economist 'Fresh and touching' Wall Street Journal 'A precision of detail which brings the sounds from the tenements, the heat of the sidewalk steaming off the pages' Sunday Express 'A meticulous evocation of a now-distant episode of the American experience' New York Times Book Review Mercy of a Rude Stream: The Complete Novels includes 1) A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park 2) A Diving Rock on the Hudson 3) From Bondage 4) Requiem for Harlem.

About this title

Review

After the publication of his first novel, Call It Sleep, at the tender age of 28 in 1934, Henry Roth fell into a writer's block that lasted more than 40 years. He began writing again in the 1970s and Mercy of a Rude Stream, intended to be a six-volume series, is the result. A chronicle of the life of Ira Stigman, the first two volumes, A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park and A Diving Rock on the Hudson, were published in 1994 and 1995. Roth died in October of 1995, and the posthumously published From Bondage is the third in the series. Though the novel is full of observations and events from Roth's life, he was adamant before his death that this third volume was not autobiographical.

About the Author

In 1994 Henry Roth broke his sixty-year literary silence following his classic novel CALL IT SLEEP, with the publication of volume one of MERCY OF A RUDE STREAM, called A STAR SHINES OVER MT. MORRIS PARK. This four-volume series was hailed as 'unsurpassable' in the annals of twentieth-century American literature. Henry Roth died aged 89 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 1995.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753800047
• ISBN 13: 9780753800041
• Binding: Paperback