BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

Sophie's Choice

by William Styron · 1979

Literary Fiction · ranked #203 in category

Stingo, a young Southern writer in Brooklyn in 1947, becomes close to Sophie Zawistowski — a beautiful Polish survivor of Auschwitz — and her brilliant, tormented lover Nathan. The novel builds to Sophie's terrible secret: the choice she was forced to make in the camp. Styron's National Book Award-winning novel is about guilt, survival and the American encounter with European atrocity.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
1979 · 1970s
Author
William Styron
Standing
Essential Read

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