Ragtime
A Novel
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It isn't easy to imitate musical syncopation in prose, but Doctorow pulls it off in the audio edition of his now-classic 1975 novel. The ebb and flow and swing of his sentences, reflecting turn-of-the-century jazz genres, are captured perfectly in his low-key, fast-paced reading. Doctorow seamlessly interweaves his invented characters and incidents with a wide range of historical events and people like Houdini, Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Sigmund Freud, and others to create a portrait of early-20th-century America that presages the rise of the civil rights and women's movements and our involvement in two world wars. Doctorow's novel and his narration are gifts to savor. A Random House paperback.
