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Sophie's Choice by William Styron
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Sophie's Choice (original 1979; edition 2004)

by William Styron

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5,977871,641 (4.12)290
Fiction. Literature. HTML:This award-winning novel of love, survival, and agonizing regret in postâ??WWII Brooklyn "belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces" (The Washington Post Book World).
Winner of the National Book Award and a modern classic, Sophie's Choice centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist; Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor; and Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor who is Nathan's lover. Their entanglement in one another's lives will build to a stirring revelation of agonizing secrets that will change them forever.

Poetic in its execution, and epic in its emotional sweep, Sophie's Choice explores the good and evil of humanity through Stingo's burgeoning worldliness, Nathan's volatile personality, and Sophie's tragic past. Mixing elements from Styron's own experience with themes of the Holocaust and the history of slavery in the American South, the novel is a profound and haunting human drama, representing Styron at the pinnacle of his literary brilliance.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.… (more)
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Title:Sophie's Choice
Authors:William Styron
Info:Vintage (2004), Paperback, 656 pages
Collections:Your library
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Sophie's Choice by William Styron (1979)

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» See also 290 mentions

English (74)  Spanish (2)  French (2)  Dutch (2)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  Italian (1)  Finnish (1)  Hebrew (1)  Lithuanian (1)  Danish (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (87)
Showing 1-5 of 74 (next | show all)
I read this as part of my illegal books 2023 and forgot to post it in Feb.

This is a bullshit book. If you've only seen the movie, stick with that. I got nearly half-way through the book, and I know more about the main character's penis than I do about Sophie. This wasn't an illegal book because it was about Nazis. It was an illegal book because the main character goes on and on and on about masturbating while thinking about Sophie. Before he meets her. He watches her from his window. And masturbates. It's creepy. I do not care that it is a classic. The protagonist is a dirty creep.

Why are men like Styron praised for writing books like this? Ask yourself this question objectively.

This is one of those books Twain was referring to when he quipped:
“′Classic′ – a book which people praise and don't read.”
  rabbit-stew | Dec 31, 2023 |
I saw the movie Sophie’s Choice many years ago, and like most people, was deeply moved and disturbed by the experience. I have never watched it again, but have seen several discussions of the movie recently, leading me to realize that I had never read the book, which is somewhat unusual. So, I elected to remedy the situation.

I do not recall the details of the movie in enough specificity to say whether the movie accurately tracks with the book, but I’ve never heard otherwise, so will assume that it does. I do not remember most of the movie other than the “choice” and reading the book did not jog my memory in that regard.

I can only say that the book is extremely well written and I found it captivating. I was not prepared for the extremely sexually charged content, but was certainly not in any way put off by it. It could be an issue for some readers, but given the subject matter, if you can wade through Auschwitz, you can probably make it through a little (well, really a lot) of sex.

If you are getting ready to purchase this book, you have likely seen the movie, or at least are familiar with its subject matter. If not, be aware that it is perhaps the most disturbing account, though fictional, of events occurring during the Holocaust. And while fictional, many of the events likely occurred dozens, if not hundreds of times every day. It should be an emotional experience to read this book. If it is not, you have issues that need to be addressed. ( )
  santhony | Nov 15, 2023 |
The story of Sophie, a holocaust survivor who has made her way to Brooklyn, NY. A complicated person in a relationship with Nathan who has his own issues. The story is told by Stingo who tells us the story of Sophie and Nathan. Styron uses a lot of archaic words that I needed to have a dictionary in order to look up these words. ( )
  foof2you | Jun 17, 2023 |
A bruisingly beautiful book that will leave you with questions about yourself and the nature of being human. A must read for every thinking human, even if through gritted teeth. ( )
  SwatiRavi | Jun 27, 2022 |
I'd like to read this book again. If I can take it...... ( )
  bcrowl399 | Jun 28, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 74 (next | show all)
Evoking a period just after the end of that War, the novel deals with themes so plangent and painful, particularly Sophie’s experiences in the Holocaust, that the book becomes an important meditation on the effects of war on the individual consciousness.
 
More than once in this smugly autobiographical novel, Styron pouts about how his last book, The Confessions of Nat Turner, drew accusations of exploitation, accusations that "I had turned to my own profit and advantage the miseries of slavery." And Sophie's Choice will probably draw similar accusations about Styron's use of the Holocaust: his new novel often seems to be a strong but skin-deep psychosexual melodrama that's been artificially heaped with import by making one of the characters--Sophie--a concentration-camp survivor.
added by smasler | editKirkus Reivews (Jun 1, 1979)
 
In "Sophie's Choice," his first novel in 11 years, you will participate in his greatest risks to date,

both in structure and theme.

Within the context of a single Brooklyn sum- mer, the summer of 1947, in which the autobiog- figure and narrator, Stingo, sets out to write the "dark Tidewater fable" that will be- come "Lie Down in Darkness," Styron will set himself the task of trying to understand what he calls "the central issue" of the 20th Century: the embodiment of evil that was Auschwitz. And how does a 22-year-old Southerner, just fired from his job as a junior editor at McGraw Hill, with literary aspirations and in robust health, connect even remotely with Auschwitz? In 1947?
added by smasler | editChicago Tribune, Gail Godwin (May 27, 1979)
 
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Epigraph
Who'll show a child just as it is? Who'll place it within its constellation, with the measure of distance in its hand? Who'll make its death from grey bread, that grows hard — or leave it there, within the round mouth, like the choking core of a sweet apple? ... Minds of murderers are easily divined. But this, though: death, the whole of death, — even before life's begun, to hold it all so gently, and be good: this is beyond description!
Rainer Maria Rilke, from the fourth Duino Elegy translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender
... I seek that essential region of the soul where absolute evil confronts brotherhood.
—André Malraux, Lazare, 1974
Dedication
To the Memory

of

My Father

(1889-1978)
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In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:This award-winning novel of love, survival, and agonizing regret in postâ??WWII Brooklyn "belongs on that small shelf reserved for American masterpieces" (The Washington Post Book World).
Winner of the National Book Award and a modern classic, Sophie's Choice centers on three characters: Stingo, a sexually frustrated aspiring novelist; Nathan, his charismatic but violent Jewish neighbor; and Sophie, an Auschwitz survivor who is Nathan's lover. Their entanglement in one another's lives will build to a stirring revelation of agonizing secrets that will change them forever.

Poetic in its execution, and epic in its emotional sweep, Sophie's Choice explores the good and evil of humanity through Stingo's burgeoning worldliness, Nathan's volatile personality, and Sophie's tragic past. Mixing elements from Styron's own experience with themes of the Holocaust and the history of slavery in the American South, the novel is a profound and haunting human drama, representing Styron at the pinnacle of his literary brilliance.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Styron, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Styron family and the Duke University Archives.

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