Tropic of Cancer

At last an unprintable book that is fit to read – Ezra PoundA momentous event in the history of modern writing – Samuel BeckettOne of the ten or twenty great novels of our century, a revolution in consciousness equal to The Sun Also Rises – Norman MailerRead him for five pages, ten pages, and you feel the peculiar relief that comes not so much from understanding as from being understood. ‘He knows all about me,’ you feel; ‘he wrote this especially for me’. It is as though you could hear a voice speaking to you, a friendly American voice, with no humbug in it, no moral purpose, merely an implicit assumption that we are all alike – George OrwellThe book that forever changed the way American literature would be written – Erica Jong

Henry Miller (1891-1980) is one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. His best-known novels include Tropic of Cancer (1934), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), and the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (Sexus, 1949, Plexus, 1953, and Nexus, 1959), all published in France and banned in the US and the UK until 1964. He is widely recognised as an irreverent, risk-taking writer who redefined the novel and made the link between the European avant-garde and the American Beat generation.