By: Carson McCullers, Kasia Boddy (Introduction by)

Paperback

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Carson McCullers's prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the cafe where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to grow up, an angry drunkard, a frustrated black doctor: each pours their heart out to Singer, their silent confidant, and he in turn changes their disenchanted lives in ways they could never imagine... Moving, sensitive and deeply humane, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter explores loneliness, the human need for understanding and our search for love.

"To me the most impressive aspect of THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice of those of her own race. This cannot be accounted for stylistically or politically; it seems to stem from an attitude toward life." -- Richard Wright
"When one puts [this book] down, it is with . . . a feeling of having been nourished by the truth." --May Sarton
"A remarkable book . . . [McCullers] writes with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming." The New York Times
"Quite remarkable . . . McCullers leaves her characters hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory." The Nation
"To me the most impressive aspect of 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race." -- Richard Wright New Republic
"One cannot help remarking that this is an extraordinary novel to have been written by a young woman of twenty-two; but the more important fact is that it is an extraordinary novel in its own right, considerations of authorship apart." -- Saturday Review of Literature Saturday Review
"The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has remarkable power, sweep and certainty . . . Her art suggests a Van Gogh painting peopled with Faulkner figures." The New York Times Book Review
"Sensitively conceived and expertly told . . . Its quality as writing and the intensity of its theme combine to make it one of the outstanding novels of recent years." --Times-Picayune
"Besides telling a good story, the author has peopled it with a small group of characters so powerfully drawn as to linger long in memory." Philadelphia Inquirer
"[McCullers] writes with a calm and factual realism, and with a deep and abiding insight into human psychology. She does so without anr

ISBN: 9780141185224
ISBN-10: 0141185228
Series: Penguin Classics Ser.
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 352
Published: February 2001
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 21.0  x 1.5
Weight (kg): 19.9