Book details
The Benefactor
A Novel
Author: Susan Sontag
The Benefactor
$11.99
About This Book
Book Details
The Benefactor, Susan Sontag's first book and first 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.
Imprint Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN
9781466853539
In The News
“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 Creators
The Benefactor