Böcker av Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis published his book Ann Vickers in 1933. The story follows Ann Vickers, the protagonist, from her school days as a tomboy in the American Midwest in the late nineteenth century, through college, and into her forties. It details her early 20th-century postgraduate suffragist period. She is incarcerated because she is a suffragist, and her experiences there inspire her interest in social work and jail reform. She had her first sexual encounter while working as a social worker in a settlement home during the First World War, gets pregnant, and then has an abortion. She marries a dull man years later after becoming successful in operating a cutting-edge jail for women, more out of loneliness than love.She falls in love with a controversial judge while stuck in a somewhat loveless marriage. She has a son by the judge, defying both middle-class tradition and that of her liberal social circle in New York.

Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, Elmer Gantry scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be "invited" to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church-a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence-is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. Elmer Gantry has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

First published in English in 1927, "Elmer Gantry" is Sinclair Lewis' novel which satirizes the Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the early part of the 20th century. From the 17th century onward there have been a number of efforts to reassert the influence of Christianity on social, cultural, and political life. In America, Christian Revivalism, as it is often referred to, has come in four waves, or "Great Awakenings" starting with the movement of Jonathan Edwards in the 1730s and 1740s and continuing through to the present day. With these attempts to revive the spirit of Christianity in American life have often come charlatans who seek to profit through evangelism. "Elmer Gantry" is a story of just such a charlatan. At the outset of the novel, we find a young, alcoholic, womanizing college student who abandons his ambition for a legal career to pursue a place in the ministry. After some initial failures, Gantry eventually rises to a prominent position in the Methodist church. Lewis's novel brilliantly juxtaposes the hypocritically moralizing sermons of Gantry with the character's actions, which cause the ruin of many around him. A commercial success that was viewed scornfully by the community it satirized, "Elmer Gantry" remains a captivating portrait of early 20th century America. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

The story is set in the small town of Gopher Prairie, a fictionalised version of Lewis' hometown. It relates the life and struggles of Carol Kennicott as she comes into conflict with the small-town mentality of the residents of Gopher Prairie.

Young college graduate Carol Kennicott moves from a big city to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, the small town from which her new husband hails. Imbued with ideals of urban improvement, she dreams of redesigning her adopted village, but her efforts are thwarted by the narrow-mindedness, pettiness and conventionality of the locals, who conspire against her and deride all her endeavours.An enormous commercial and critical success on its first publication in 1920, Main Street - regarded by many as Sinclair Lewis's best novel - delivers a scathing satire on the American dream, and is invaluable as a document of pre-Prohibition Middle America.

Many would suggest that it certainly could happen 'here, ' which is precisely the point that Sinclair Lewis was making when he wrote this book in 1935.

Published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, It Can't Happen Here is a chilling cautionary tale by one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century, which is still startlingly relevant almost a century later.