Babbitt

Description: Sinclair Lewis created one of the most compelling and disturbing characters of American fiction in this portrait of a hardened, conniving, social-climbing real-estate man in his classic work Babbitt. Through detailed depictions of the protagonist's home, work, and social life, a meticulous landscape is created, representing the beliefs, aspirations, and failures of the American middle class.

Review Quotes: By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"Sinclair Lewis's best--and most misunderstood--novel . . . Lewis's Babbitt is . . . one of a small group of American fictional creations who, in the early years of the 20th century, stand in their very different ways as landmarks in the story of the social evolution of our country: Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Wharton's Lily Bart, Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams, with Gatsby on the horizon." --Robert Gottlieb, The New York Times Book Review

"It is Babbitt that is [Sinclair Lewis's] most perfect creation. . . . We have to be thankful for the minor miracle that after almost a century, Babbitt still speaks to us all." --Azar Nafisi, in The Republic of Imagination

"The equal of any novel written in English in the present century." --Virginia Woolf, The Saturday Review

"Babbitt is now well into its nineties, but George F. Babbitt still lives and breathes and harrumphs. It's impossible, especially during any American election season, to read a newspaper or turn on the television without hearing the echoes of his voice. Babbitt is the original American everyman." --Nathaniel Rich, from the Foreword