This image is the cover for the book Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie

The controversial classic novel of a young woman’s journey from poverty to stardom in capitalist America.

Dissatisfied with life in rural Wisconsin, eighteen-year-old Carrie Meeber travels to Chicago. With no money or prospects, her only means of survival is a job in a squalid factory—until Charlie Drouet, a charming, well-dressed man, offers to take her to dinner.

Lavishing her with gifts, fine clothes, and her own apartment, Charlie introduces Carrie to a life of wealth and sophistication far removed from the Victorian moralizing of her youth. But when Carrie begins an affair with another man—and a career as an actress—her ambitions and desires reach far beyond what Charlie, or any man, can offer.

Later adapted into the Academy Award–nominated film Carrie, starring Laurence Olivier, Sister Carrie is widely considered “one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century” and a masterpiece of literary realism (The New York Times). But when it was first published in 1900, it stirred controversy for its depiction of female sexuality. In his Nobel Prize speech, Sinclair Lewis declared that “Sister Carrie . . . came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman.”

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Theodore Dreiser

The Indiana-born Dreiser (1871-1945) has never cut a dashing or romantic swath through American literature. He has no Pulitzer or Nobel Prize to signify his importance. Yet he remains for myriad reasons: his novels are often larger than life, rugged, and defy the norms of conventional morality and organized religion. They are unapologetic in their sexual candor--in fact, outrightly frank--and challenge even modern readers. The brooding force of Dreiser’ s writing casts a dark shadow across American letters. Here in<i>An American Tragedy</i>, Dreiser shows us the flip side of The American Dream in a gathering storm that echoes with all of the power and force of Dostoevsky’ s <i>Crime and Punishment</i>. Inspired by the writings of Balzac and the ideas of Spenser and Freud, Dreiser went on to become one of America’ s best naturalist writers. <i>An American Tragedy</i> is testimony to the strength of Dreiser’ s work: it retains all of its original intensity and force.

Open Road Media