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U.S.a.

Nov 27, 2025 10:20 PM

Author:John Dos Passos

U.S.a.

'My literary hero is John Dos Passos' - Adam Curtis (filmmaker)

'Wonderful and extraordinary'

Robert McCrum, Observer

'No novelist in America has written more sombrely of the dangers to individual integrity in a centrally controlled society'

Alfred Kazin

The Penguin Modern Classics edition of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction which, with its unique melange of fact and fiction, creates a compelling, tragic vision of America at the dawn of the twentieth century.

In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses 'camera eye' and 'newsreel' sections to create a fragmented atmosphere. Through the testimony of numerous characters, both fictional and historical figures, he builds up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century. Richly detailed and throbbing with vitality, U.S.A. vividly evokes that uncertain period when America, so full of ideas and potential, was slowly and painfully abandoning the great American Dream.

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago, the son of an eminent lawyer. After graduating from Harvard he served in the US Army Medical Corps during the First World War, and dabbled in journalism before embarking on life as a writer. In 1925 he published Manhattan Transfer, his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style - a mixture of fact and fiction. His began a series of panoramic epics of American life with the U.S.A. trilogy, using the same technique and tracing, through interwoven biographies, the story of America from the early twentieth century to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

Reviews

The biggest influence was a novel my father gave me to read at the age of about 13, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos. At that age, it just got me. You can trace back everything I do to that novel because it's all about the relationship between grand history and individual experience. And it's a collage with quotes from newsreels, cinema, and newspapers-a collage of history. That's where I get it all from.

—— Adam Curtis (filmmaker)

The most significant novel yet about Korea. For the first time, a Korean author has fused both classical and contemporary indigenous poetry with the skill and breadth of vision expected of an international writer

—— Keith Howard , Times Literary Supplement

This book goes to the heart of the artist's greatest concern: the freedom to create, the courage to create in a climate of uncertainty and repression

—— Alfred Eibel , Quotidien de Paris

'A very gripping story . . . the reader is drawn in inexorably to discover what horror lies at the heart of it . . . an apocalyptic fable for today'

—— John Spurling , The Times Literary Supplement

'Many respectable judges would put Edric in the top ten of British novelists currently at work . . . as a writer, he specialises in the delicate hint and the game not given away'

—— D.J. Taylor , Spectator

'It will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel'

—— Peter Kemp , The Sunday Times

'Stunning . . . evocatively brings to life the stifling humidity and constant rainfall of the Congo'

—— John Cooper , The Times

'A really brilliant first novel, he is obviously a major talent'

—— Prunella Scales

'The match of the madder moments of John Irving or Tom Sharpe...this is a promisingly entertaining "lite" read'

—— The Times

'At its best when taking pot-shots at a wide variety of modern ills - fast food, tabloid media, downsizing, soap-opera politics...One of Morgan's nicer inventions is a computer program that boils down complex texts to their essentials. Its treatment of the Old Testament renders it down to: "Because I say so, that's why"'

—— Independent

'Suspenseful, atmospheric and highly intelligent, Jody Shields focuses a brilliant light on the murky world of imperial Vienna'

—— D. M. Thomas

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