Product Description

The controversial, erotic and hilarious companion to the legendary Tropic of Cancer, in a smart new Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition. A riotous and explosive mixture of joys and frustrations, Tropic of Capricorn chronicles Miller's early life in New York, from his repressive Brooklyn childhood spent amongst 'a galaxy of screwballs' to frantic, hilarious years of dead-end jobs and innumerable erotic adventures. Irreverent and ironic, Tropic of Capricorn is both a comic portrait of the irrepressible Miller himself and a scathing attack on respectable America, the very foundations of which he hoped to shatter. The publication of Tropic of Capricorn and its sister-volume Tropic of Cancer in Paris in the 1930s was hailed by Samuel Beckett as 'a momentous event in the history of modern writing'. The books were subsequently banned in the UK and the USA for nearly thirty years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44066 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
'The world of Capricorn is peopled by eccentrics and nymphomaniacs, to say nothing of the incorrigibly eccentric Miller himself. There is also a memorable portrait of his father, a delicate account of childhood, and savage, humane comedy in the bedlam of an employment office. The rest: fornication and anarchism, sometimes very funny, always rich, exultant and honest.' Sunday Times 'In the course of Tropic of Capricorn, Miller as a Miss Lonelyhearts of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, hires and fires an inexhaustible queue of ex-convicts and whores who turn the office into a hive of degradation. Miller lives constantly at the flashpoint of violence, which he manages to convert to comedy without undermining the anger' Observer 'Tropic of Capricorn is a teeming frieze of fights, copulations and epiphanies. The emphasis is on the mysterious value of ordinary life, not its futility' New Statesman 'A superb entertainment' New York Times

About the Author
Henry Miller was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1930, Miller went to live in Paris. For the next ten years he mingled with impoverished expatriates and bohemian Parisians; his first published book, Tropic of Cancer appeared in 1934 from the Obelisk Press in Paris. It was followed five years later by its sister volume Tropic of Capricorn. Sexually explicit, these books electrified the European literary avant-garde and were almost universally banned outside France. In 1961, after an epic legal battle, Tropic of Cancer was finally published in the States (and then in England in 1963). Miller became a household name, hailed by the Sixties counter-culture as a prophet of freedom and sexual revolution. He died on June 7 1980.

Customer Reviews

Henry Miller does not hate humanity!
To say that Henry Miller hated humanity is a complete falsehood. To quote from his essay 'The Hour of Man': "By responding with a full spirit to any demand which is made upon us we aid our fellow man to help himself". The reaction of one of the other reviewers demonstrates the enduring greatness of this book, and that its power to shock lies not in its famed obscenity but in its unparalleled honesty. When I read Henry Miller I am continuously struck by the truthfullness of what I read. This can be too much for some people to bear, to quote from the same essay:
"We hide from the face of reality: it is too terrible, we think. Yet it is we, we, only we, who have created this hideous world. And it is we who will change it- by changing our own inner vision."
I should also say that Miller's prose style is virtuosic and NOT 'stream-of-consciousness'. Miller does not present us with the inner thoughts of characters written in such a way as to reflect the processes of thought. He writes mostly from the first person, but with such freedom and virtuosity as I have never come across. Like a bird trapped in a cage, Miller sings his heart out for the pure joy of it. Reading this book for the first time was the most moving experience I have ever had when engaging with a work of art.

not bad, not bad
im not going to write a serious review because im only a kid. i would just like to know why the person who gave one star thinks that something so bad is capable of producing depression - surely it has some power over you? it did for me; i felt almost sucidal after reading just some of this book when i was only seventeen, so be warned, there's a darkness to this text like no other i've experienced before, but it's because it's real. im reading it again now and im in love with it, the writing draws you in so that time can pass without you even realising. if it's actually the worst book you've ever read that's an achievment.

Vital
I read this book, having seen reviews on other sites, and having read Henry and June by Anais Nin and some of her other novels. People had made comments that this book changed their life, and their way of looking at the world. I found it liberating. There are moments of clarity which strike resonance and truly make you stand back and revalue the accepted. There is a review on this site that calls this book disgusting. They missed the point. By a long way. There is an energy and vitality to Millers writing that is infectious, and quite simply, brilliant.