Babbitt

By Sinclair Lewis
Introduction by Sally E. Parry
Afterword by Azar Nafisi

By Sinclair Lewis
Introduction by Sally E. Parry
Afterword by Azar Nafisi

Best Seller
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
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Mass Market Paperback $7.95

May 05, 2015 | 432 Pages

Ebook $6.99

May 05, 2015 | 432 Pages

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      May 05, 2015 | 432 Pages

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    About Babbitt

    Since the 1922 publication of Babbitt, its eponymous antihero—a prosperous real estate broker and relentless social climber inhabiting a Midwestern town called Zenith—has become a symbol of stultifying values and middle-class hypocrisy. At once a conformist and a rebel, George F. Babbitt represents an ordinary man whose life turns upside down during one of the most profound sea changes in American cultural history: the mechanization and hucksterism of the Roaring Twenties. Babbitt, his family, and his social circle are the very essence of the American Dream in all its glory and emptiness, and their story is a stirring portrait of a way of life in profound flux. Babbitt remains one of Sinclair Lewis’s most widely read novels. Contemptible and touching, frivolous and tragic, Babbitt is a rich, complex character whose legacy carries an eerie resonance to this day.

    Includes a new afterword by Azar Nafisi
    Introduction by Sally E. Parry 

    About Babbitt

    In the fall of 1920, Sinclair Lewis began a novel set in a fast-growing city with the heart and mind of a small town. For the center of his cutting satire of American business he created the bustling, shallow, and myopic George F. Babbitt, the epitome of middle-class mediocrity. The novel cemented Lewis’s prominence as a social commentator.

    Babbitt basks in his pedestrian success and the popularity it has brought him. He demands high moral standards from those around him while flirting with women, and he yearns to have rich friends while shunning those less fortunate than he. But Babbitt’s secure complacency is shattered when his best friend is sent to prison, and he struggles to find meaning in his hollow life. He revolts, but finds that his former routine is not so easily thrown over.

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    Praise

    “It is Babbitt that is [Sinclair Lewis’s] most perfect creation. . . . We have to be thankful for the minor miracle that after almost a century, Babbitt still speaks to us all.” —Azar Nafisi, in The Republic of Imagination

    “Babbitt is now well into its nineties, but George F. Babbitt still lives and breathes and harrumphs. It’s impossible, especially during any American election season, to read a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing the echoes of his voice. Babbitt is the original American everyman.” —Nathaniel Rich, from the Foreword

    “The equal of any novel written in English in the present century.” —Virginia Woolf, The Saturday Review

    About Sinclair Lewis

    Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, the first American novelist to be so honored. He was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of a doctor. After an extremely unhappy childhood, he went to Yale… More about Sinclair Lewis

    About Sinclair Lewis

    Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, the first American novelist to be so honored. He was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the son of a doctor. After an extremely unhappy childhood, he went to Yale… More about Sinclair Lewis

    Product Details

    Mass Market Paperback
    Published by Signet
    May 05, 2015 | 432 Pages | 4-3/16 x 6-3/4 | ISBN 9780451473714

    Ebook
    Published by Signet
    May 05, 2015 | 432 Pages | ISBN 9780698192522

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