Henry Roth

An American Type: a Novel Henry Roth Unabridged edition

[Read by Anthony Heald]

The author of the greatest American immigrant novel, ''Call It Sleep'', returns with this posthumous work. Discovered in a stack of nearly 2,000 unpublished pages by a young New Yorker editor,'' An American Type'' is the final novel by Henry Roth whose Call It Sleep was published in 1934 and who ''staged the literary comeback of the century'' (Vanity Fair) with'' Mercy of a Rude Stream'' in 1994. -- ''An American Type'' reintroduces us to its protagonist, Roth's alter ego, Ira, who abandons his controlling lover, Edith, in favor of a blond, aristocratic pianist at Yaddo. The ensuing conflict between his Jewish ghetto roots and his high-flown, writerly aspirations forces Ira to abandon his family temporarily for the sun-soaked promise of the American West. -- Fast-paced but wrenching, set against a backdrop of crumbling piers, bedbug-infested SROs, and skyscrapers in glimmering Manhattan and seedy LA, ''An American Type'' is perhaps the last firsthand testament of the Depression, as well as a universal statement about the constant reinvention of American identity and the transcendence of love.