Tropic of Cancer

Henry Miller

Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

About this ebook

Henry Miller’s famously banned book is “a matter-of-fact celebration of chucking one’s dreary life and following your heart to Paris” (Richard Price).
 
Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for twenty-seven years after its first publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards, ushering in a new era of freedom and frankness in modern literature, permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller’s famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s. Tropic of Cancer is now considered, as Norman Mailer said, “one of the ten or twenty great novels of our century.”

Ratings and reviews

I had trouble reading this book at first but once I got the poetic flow of it, it was really good. I'd describe his writing or poetry as abstract and very personal he conjures thoughts that we would never say out loud. Very good but laboring.

I'm told I'm too fancy. I'm told I'm pretentious in my tastes. I'm told I'm a hyperliterat. I COULD NOT get through this story! I know it's a classic and one of the pinnacles of literature; however, I was bored to tears!

So many reviewers don't understand Art. I love this book and this Author. Miller's stream of consciousness prose at times borders on greatness. So many passages have stayed with me for decades. Its profane and profound. Miller's novel is dark satrical and funny. They banned it because timid hypocrites dont understand transgressive Art

About the author

Henry Miller (1891 1980) was one of the most controversial American novelists during his lifetime. His book, The Tropic of Cancer, was banned in the some U.S. states before being overruled by the Supreme Court. New Directions publishes several of his books.