Appointment in Samarra: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

John O'Hara

Eph 2013 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Penguin

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The best-loved book by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz compared to the author of The Great Gatsby, calling him “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald”

One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O’Hara’s crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.

Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O’Hara’s iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream—and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.

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John O’Hara (1905–1970) was among the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Championed by Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, he wrote fourteen novels, including BUtterfield 8, which was made into a film starring Elizabeth Taylor, and had more stories published in the New Yorker than anyone in the history of the magazine.

Charles McGrath is a writer-at-large for the New York Times and the former editor of the New York Times Book Review and the New Yorker. He lives in New Jersey.