The Enormous Room

An autobiographical novel of captivity in World War I France from a prize-winning literary icon.

Working as an ambulance driver in the First World War, a young man is suddenly taken in by the authorities, along with his friend who has been targeted for his antiwar sentiments. This novel recounts E. E. Cummings’s experience spending four months in an “enormous room” with other prisoners, enlivened by the people he meets and the events he witnesses in the midst of his bizarre situation.
Cummings, recipient of a Bollingen Prize, a National Book Award citation, and many other literary honors, draws on his own life for this outstanding novel.