Soft City

"A tour de force" (Jan Morris) from the winner of the national book critics circle award.

Jonathan Raban's vivid, often funny portrait of metropolitan life is part reportage, part incisive thesis, part intimate autobiography, and a much-quoted classic of the literature of the city. In an age when the big city has fewer friends than ever, this is a passionate and imaginative defense of city life, its "unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom." Soft City, first published in 1974, records one man's attempt to plot a course through the urban labyrinth. Holding up a revealing mirror to the modern city, Raban finds it a stage for a demanding and expressive kind of personal drama.

Readers of Arabia (1979), Old Glory (1982), Hunting Mister Heartbreak (1990), and, more recently, Badlands (1997) will be delighted to discover this early work by one of the most inventive and enjoyable writers of our time.

Jonathan Raban is the only writer to have won the prestigious Thomas Cook Book Award twice (in 1981 and 1991). In 1997 he was honored with both the National Book Critics Circle Award and a PEN Award for his most recent book, Badlands.