Tropic of Capricorn

Description

One of Henry Miller's most scandalous books, Tropic of Capricorn is now in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time A story of sexual and spiritual awakening, Tropic of Capricorn shocked readers as much as Henry Miller's first novel, Tropic of Cancer. 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. As daring, frank and erotic as his first novel, Tropic of Capricorn is a cult modern classic.

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.

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