Call It Sleep

Largely ignored when it first appeared in 1934,  Call It Sleep was republished in 1964 to overwhelming acclaim and rose immediately to the top of the bestseller lists, selling over a million copies. Today it is universally recognized as a masterpiece of American fiction, and has been hailed by Alfred Kazin as "the most profound novel of Jewish life by an American". Although written in English, it mixes the language of the streets with the Yiddish of the home, while using Hebrew to convey mystic aspects of Judaism. Henry Roth was also known as a one-book writer, who had produced nothing after the masterpiece he published at 26.  However, in 1995, at 89, he  published to laudatory reviews the first two volumes of his second novel. He died that year, Roth lived long enough to sign the Arion edition of Call It Sleep.