A masterpiece of modernist fiction that creates a vividly
impressionistic portrait of a teeming and multi-faceted New York City
In a series of overlapping stories, John Dos Passos's Manhattan
Transfer takes us from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age in a narrative
collage that brings the complexity of the urban environment to life.
From Wall Street to the waterfront, from the Bowery to the Village, from
the city's grand avenues to its gritty alleys, its wealthy power brokers
and its struggling immigrants, this kaleidoscopic novel conveys the
restless energy of life in Manhattan. The innovative novelistic
techniques Dos Passos used, marked by flashbacks, stream of
consciousness, and a cinematic perspective, would go on to inspire a new
school of writing. Almost a century after it was written, Manhattan
Transfer remains an indelible tribute to the contradictions of the
American dream.