Ragtime - by E L Doctorow (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

First published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be--a singular tapestry hailed as "an extraordinarily deft, lyrical, rich novel that catches the spirit of the country" (The New Yorker) between the turn of the century and the First World War.

Selected by the Modern Library and The Guardian as one of the 100 best novels of all time

The inspiration for the Tony Award-winning musical!

The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.

Review Quotes

"Doctorow's tapestry of an America rapidly losing its innocence is brilliant."--People

"One of the ten best books of the decade!"--TIME

"Brilliant . . . A resonant book of manifold ironies and rare charm."--The Boston Globe

"An extraordinarily deft, lyrical, rich novel that catches the spirit of the country . . . in a fluid musical way that is as original as it is satisfying."--The New Yorker

"As exhilarating as a deep breath of oxygen . . . a remarkable achievement. . . . Doctorow has found a fresh way to orchestrate the themes of American innocence, energy, and ambition."--Newsweek

"Excellent . . . One devours it in a single sitting."--The New York Times

"An extraordinary fictional tapestry. . . . Once in there's no possible way out except through the last page."--The New Republic

"Ingeniously structured . . . beautiful . . . Likely to be read a second time and more."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

About the Author

E. L. Doctorow's works of fiction include Andrew's Brain, Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World's Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, honoring a writer's lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame and won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, which is given to an author whose "scale of achievement over a sustained career [places] him in the highest rank of American literature." In 2013 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. Doctorow died in 2015.