Sophie's Choice
A Novel
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3.0 • 11 Ratings
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
This award-winning novel of love, survival, and agonizing regret in post–WWII Brooklyn "belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces" (The Washington Post Book World).
Winner of the National Book Award and a modern classic, Sophie's Choice centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist; Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor; and Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor who is Nathan's lover. Their entanglement in one another's lives will build to a stirring revelation of agonizing secrets that will change them forever.
Poetic in its execution, and epic in its emotional sweep, Sophie's Choice explores the good and evil of humanity through Stingo's burgeoning worldliness, Nathan's volatile personality, and Sophie's tragic past. Mixing elements from Styron's own experience with themes of the Holocaust and the history of slavery in the American South, the novel is a profound and haunting human drama, representing Styron at the pinnacle of his literary brilliance.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Even if you know what the term “Sophie’s choice” means in popular culture (basically, it’s an impossible decision, but we’re not gonna say anything more than that), you really need to read this unforgettable classic. William Styron’s novel pulses with joy, heartbreak, and terror. The story is set in 1947, in a quirky Brooklyn boardinghouse, where a young Southern writer named Stingo becomes friendly with the couple next door. Nathan is handsome, charming, and disturbingly psychotic; the Polish-born Sophie is a survivor of Auschwitz. Over the course of one summer, Styron’s three characters become embroiled in an obsessive relationship that slowly pushes Sophie’s dark, unthinkable secrets to the fore. Styron keeps us on our toes, yanking us from what at first seems to be a rich historical romance to a dark examination of what people do to survive after witnessing humanity at its worst. His novel remains a rollercoaster of a read, steeped in drama, lust, and heartbreak.
Customer Reviews
Sophie's Choice
Sadly this book is the most frustrating book I have ever read. Just goes on with an overindulgence of detail which I felt was totally unnecessary . It is a shame that the author preferred writing and reading his own thoughts rather than getting on with the story and the character's dialogue. The story and history was tragic and factual but the detail just got on my nerves.