The Benefactor

The Benefactor, Susan Sontag's first book and novel, originally published in 1963, introduced a unique writer to the world. In the form of a memoir by a latter-day Candide named Hippolyte, The Benefactor leads us on a kind of psychic Grand Tour, in which Hippolyte's violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his surprising experiences in the "real world." Sontag's novel supplies a fascinating, knowing, acerbic portrait of a certain bohemian demimonde that flourished in France until quite recently. More important, The Benefactor is a novel about ideas—especially religious ideas—unlike any other: funny, acrobatic, disturbing, profound.

Praise

"An extraordinary, imaginative achievement that plays over the reader's senses with boldness, grace, and daring."—John Hawkes

"A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centered, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life."—New York Post

"Originality, economy of language, brilliance . . . There is a Kafka-esque quality to The Benefactor."—Newsday

"Remarkable . . . Its ancestors are Baudelaire, Kafka, and perhaps in the distance Dostoyevsky and Proust."—John Wain

"A major writer . . . I especially admired how she can make a real story out of dreams and thoughts."—Hannah Arendt

About the Author(s)

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag became a cultural figure upon the publication of her pathbreaking collection of essays Against Interpretation in 1966.  She went on to write four novels, including In America, which won the National Book Award for Fiction, as well as a collection of stories, several plays, and seven subsequent works of nonfiction, among them On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and Regarding the Pain of Others. Her many international honors included the Jerusalem Prize in 2001 and the Friedenspreis (Peace Prize) of the German Book Trade in 2003. She died in New York City on December 28, 2004.

photo: Mikhail Lemkhin

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