Call it Sleep

Description

A masterpiece of American literature, Call It Sleep is a glorious ode to the migrant experience David Schearl arrives in America in his mother's arms. Waiting for them is a father and husband consumed by frustration - and a labyrinth of language and asphalt, New York City at the turn of the century. As David navigates his father's anger and this alien world, he begins to glimpse deeper mysteries- the ancient and enduring quality of Jewish tradition, the shadow and the light of human desire, the reasons why people seek refuge in another land... One of the true masterworks of American fiction, Call It Sleep is a triumph of colour and sound, a towering peak of modernist writing, and an extraordinary ode to the child and the emigrant- the innocence, the confusion, the fear and the joy.

Henry Roth (1906-1995) was born in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galitzia. He probably landed on Elis Island in 1909, and began his life in New York on the Lower East Side, in the slums where Call It Sleep is set. He is the author as well of Shifting Landscapes, a collection of essays, and the Mercy of a Rude Stream tetralogy. Alfred Kazin (1915-98), was an American critic. His first book, On Native Grounds (1942), is a critical study of American prose literature from Howells to Faulkner. Later essay collections include The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), Bright Book of Life (1973), An American Procession (1984), Writing Was Everything (1995), and God & the American Writer (1997).