Description

‘For all its excellence as a social panorama and a sketch of a marriage, it is as a picture of a man destroyed by drink and pride that Appointment in Samarra lives frighteningly in the mind’ John Updike

Julian English prides himself a member of his hometown’s social elite, but from the moment he throws a cocktail in the face of a powerful business associate his life spirals out of control, taking his loving but troubled marriage with it.

Following English’s rapid decline and fall, Appointment in Samarra is a fast-paced and blackly comic portrait of 1930s America. O’Hara’s debut novel introduced a prolific new voice to a generation and still stands as one of the great works of American fiction.

Publisher Review

Mr O'Hara's eyes and ears have been spared nothing, but he has kept in his heart a curious and bitter mercy -- Dorothy Parker O'Hara writes with swift realism, wisely avoids sentimentality * Time Magazine * Dramatic...exciting...vivid and written at high speed...accurate and often penetrating * The Nation * Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well -- John O'Hara on John O'Hara. He had this inscribed on his gravestone.