To the Lighthouse - (Vintage Classics) by Virginia Woolf (Paperback)

About the Book

"A beautiful edition of the groundbreaking classic novel, with a new introduction by award-winning writer Susan Choi. "Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love." -Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm. The enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose. Though the novel turns on the death of its central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Observed across the years at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. To the Lighthouse enacts a moving allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A beautiful edition of the groundbreaking classic novel, with a new introduction by award-winning writer Susan Choi

"Without question one of the two or three finest novels of the twentieth century. Woolf comments on the most pressing dramas of our human predicament: war, mortality, family, love." -Rick Moody, bestselling author of The Ice Storm

The enduring power of this iconic classic flows from the brilliance of its narrative technique and the impressionistic beauty of its prose. Though the novel turns on the death of its central figure, Mrs. Ramsay, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory that is also a celebration of domestic life and its most intimate details. Observed across the years at their vacation house on the Isle of Skye, Mrs. Ramsay and her family seek to recapture meaning from the flux of things and the passage of time. To the Lighthouse enacts a moving allegory of the creative consciousness and its momentary triumphs over fleeting material life.

Review Quotes

"I reread this book every once in a while, and every time I do I find it more capacious and startling. It's so revolutionary and so exquisitely wrought that it keeps evolving on its own somehow, as if it's alive." --Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

"A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again." --Greta Gerwig, director of Lady Bird and Little Women

"To the Lighthouse is one of the greatest elegies in the English language, a book which transcends time." --Margaret Drabble, author of The Witch of Exmoor

"[Woolf's] people are astoundingly real...The tragic futility, the absurdity, the pathetic beauty, of life-we experience all of this in our sharing of seven hours of Mrs. Ramsay's wasted or not wasted existence. We have seen, through her, the world." --Conrad Aiken, author of The Conversation

About the Author

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) was born in London. A pioneer in the narrative use of stream of consciousness, she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. This was followed by literary criticism and essays, most notably A Room of One's Own, and other acclaimed novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando.

ABOUT THE INTRODUCER: SUSAN CHOI is the author of five novels, including Trust Exercise, which received the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. She has also been recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award, a Lamba Literary award, the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She serves as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Brooklyn.