The first novel by the great American novelist, now the subject of a major new film, Genius, starring Jude Law, Colin Firth, Dominic West and Nicole Kidman.

Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial Eliza, grows up in small-town America. Both lonely outsider and passionate chronicler of American life, Eugene experiences upheaval and family tragedy before coming to realise that he must leave his home behind if he is to forge his own path in the world. This is the dazzlingly rich first novel from one of the most brilliant and mercurial voices of early twentieth-century, who was a major influence on writers including Hunter S. Thompson, Ray Bradbury, Philip Roth and the Beats.


This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian. Wolfe's second novel, Of Time and the River, continuing the story of Eugene Gant, is also now available in Penguin Classics.

Thomas Wolfe's autobiographical first novel is a wild, epic chronicle of family, inheritance and identity, from one of the most vital and mercurial voices of early twentieth-century literature.


About the Author
Thomas Wolfe (Author)
Thomas Wolfe was born in North Carolina in 1900. His mother ran a boarding house and his father a gravestone business; Wolfe was the youngest of their eight children. His first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, was published in 1929, followed by Of Time and the River in 1935, both heavily revised by his influential editor, Max Perkins. Wolfe died in 1938 from tuberculosis, aged thirty-seven.

Elizabeth Kostova (Introducer)
Elizabeth Kostova is the author of the novels The Historian (2005) and The Swan Thieves (2010).



Reviews
Look Homeward, Angel is one of the most important novels of my life ... It's a wonderful story for any young person burning with literary ambition, but it also speaks to the longings of our whole lives; I'm still moved by Wolfe's ability to convey the human appetite for understanding and experience -- Elizabeth Kostova, author of 'The Historian'
Language as rich and ambitious and intensely American as any of our novelists has ever accomplished -- Charles Frazier, author of 'Cold Mountain'



Book Information
ISBN 9780241215746
Author Thomas Wolfe
Format Paperback
Page Count 576
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 400g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 130mm * 30mm