William Styron

"Styron's most impressive performance. . . . Belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces." -Washington Post Book World Winner of the 1980 National Book Award, Sophie's Choice is William Styron's classic novel of love, survival, and regret, set in Brooklyn in the wake of the Second World War. The novel centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist; Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor;...

Styron's stirring account of his plunge into a crippling depression, and his inspiring road to recovery   In the summer of 1985, William Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.   Darkness...

Profound and passionate essays from one of America's greatest literary voices of the twentieth century This Quiet Dust is a compilation of William Styron's nonfiction writings that confront significant moral questions with precision and vigor. He examines topics as diverse as the Holocaust, the American Dream, and the controversy that raged around his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner . In each entry, Styron expertly wields...

Three autobiographically inspired novellas by Styron that tell the story of a young writer's journey to adulthood. William Styron's A Tidewater Morning features three novellas centered around budding novelist Paul Whitehurst's coming of age during the Great Depression and Second World War. They convey Whitehurst's struggle to cope with his mother's terminal cancer, his view of the strained racial relations in the pre-war American South, and his anxiety...

Lie Down in Darkness traces the tragic fate of a Southern family with acute sensitivity, in a style that mirrors the inner lives of its four major characters. The parents are estranged, with each favoring one of their two daughters. The father dotes on Peyton, the family beauty, while the mother is devoted to Maudie, the disabled child. Told in flashbacks, opens with Peyton's funeral after her emotional unraveling and suicide. The passage Styron reads...

"Including significant previously uncollected material, My Generation is the definitive gathering of the fruits of this beloved writer's five decades of public life. Here is the William Styron unafraid to peer into the darkest corners of the 20th century or to take on the complex racial legacy of the United States. But here too is Styron writing about his daily walk with his dog, musing on the Modern Library's "100 Greatest Books," and offering personal...