Tropic of Cancer

The classic, candid, and often shocking novel of ex-pat Paris in the 1930s has spoken to many generations of readers while also being part of the literary underground for nearly three decades, remaining unpublished in the United States until 1961. It is presented in a quality, affordable new paperback edition from Quaint Press. This edition retains breaks within chapters from the original (when collapsed in generic reprints, the author's intended transitions and timeline are lost).

Henry Valentine Miller (1891-1980) was an accomplished author and artist. Born in New York City, he lived much of his life in Paris, France and Big Sur, California. He is the author of Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring, The Colossus of Maroussi, and Crazy Cock, among other novels and writings. Noted for his semi- autobiographical works that pushed the envelope of the novel form and of social acceptance, this classic book Tropic of Cancer helped to establish First Amendment law in 1964 when it was declared by the United States Supreme Court to be not obscene. Its legal imprimatur as literature virtually sounded the starting gun on the sexual revolution and the freedom in fiction known in the United States today.

George Orwell once called Miller "the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past. Even if that is objected to as an overstatement, it will probably be admitted that Miller is a writer out of the ordinary, worth more than a single glance; and after all, he is a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceptor of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses." No book reflects this truth more than Tropic of Cancer.

If reading this book feels like a vaguely familiar experience, it is because the book was passed around furtively in so many formative years . . . or because so much literature today stands on its shoulders.