Literary Fiction · DarkA young writer in a Brooklyn boarding house befriends a Polish survivor of Auschwitz and her volatile lover
Sophie's Choice
A young writer in Brooklyn befriends a Polish Holocaust survivor and her lover
Stingo loses his job as a reader at McGraw-Hill and moves into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn to write. There he befriends Nathan Landau, a Jewish-American man who claims to be a Harvard-educated scientist, and Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish Catholic Holocaust survivor and Nathan's lover. Nathan's claimed background turns out to be invented, and his illness and drug abuse fuel his jealousy and violence. Sophie slowly tells Stingo about her past under the Nazis.
More about this book
Who
Stingo, an aspiring writer from the South, Nathan Landau, and Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish survivor of Nazi camps.
World
A Brooklyn boarding house, remembered by the narrator as an adult.
What makes it different
It is a memory told in two layers: Stingo's summer, and Sophie's past, revealed in pieces. The novel drew debate about how it treated the Holocaust and was banned in several countries.
Feel
Heavy and absorbing. It won the 1980 National Book Award for Fiction (hardcover) and became a 1982 film for which Meryl Streep won an Academy Award.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Sophie's ChoiceWikipedia