From AudioFile
The most challenging passage for the narrator of this acclaimed novel occurs when ten-year-old David flees a family catastrophe. Guidall's empathetic handling of David's disjointed thoughts, and the meaning he brings to the fragments of harsh dialogue David hears, helps the listener experience the character's profound turmoil. While the rest of the novel is less impressionistic, Guidall delivers a virtuoso interpretation of David's family and friends, their New York accents and argot, and their use of Yiddish and Hebrew. In this way, a difficult, emotionally charged classic about a Jewish immigrant experience is made more accessible. S.K. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American." --Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review

"Arguably the most distinguished work of fiction ever written about immigrant life...Surely the most lyrically authentic novel in American literature about a young boy’s coming to consciousness." --Lis Harris, The New Yorker

"Roth has done for the East Side Jew what James T. Farrell is doing for the Chicago Irish in the Studs Lonigan trilogy.... When his characters are speaking pure Yiddish, Roth translates it into great beauty....The final chapters in the book have been compared to the Nighttown episodes of Joyce’s Ulysses; the comparison is apt." --John Chamberlain, The New York Times



Review
"Arguably the most distinguished work of fiction ever written about immigrant life."--Lis Harris, The New Yorker

"One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American. The central figure is David Schearl, an overwrought, phobic, and dangerously imaginative little boy. He has come to New York with his East European Jewish parents, and now, in the years between 1911 and 1913, he is exposed, shock by shock, to the blows of slum life."--Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review (front page)



Book Description
When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did this novel receive the recognition it deserves—--and still enjoys. Having sold-to-date millions of copies worldwide, Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the “dangerously imaginative” child coming of age in the slums of New York.



The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Henry Roth, published in 1934. It centers on the character and perceptions of a young boy, the son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in a ghetto in New York City. Roth uses stream-of-consciousness techniques to trace the boy's psychological development and to explore his perceptions of his family and of the larger world around him. The book powerfully evokes the terrors and anxieties the child experiences in his anguished relations with his father and realistically describes the squalid urban environment in which the family lives. The novel was rediscovered in the late 1950s and early '60s and came to be viewed both as an important proletarian novel of the 1930s and as a classic of Jewish-American literature.


From the Inside Flap
"One of the few genuinely distinguished novels written by a twentieth-century American."---Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review (front page)

When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim, though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did this novel receive the recognition it deserves---and still enjoys. Having sold to date millions of copies worldwide, Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the "dangerously imaginative" child coming of age in the slums of New York.

"Arguably the most distinguished work of fiction ever written about immigrant life...Surely the most lyrically authentic novel in American literature about a young boy's coming to consciousness "---Lis Harris, The New Yorker

"Roth has done for the East Side Jew what James T. Farrell is doing for the Chicago Irish in the Studs Lonigan trilogy.... When his characters are speaking pure Yiddish, Roth translates it into great beauty.... The final chapters in the book have been compared to the Nighttown episodes of Joyce's Ulysses; the comparison is apt."---John Chamberlain, The New York Times

"There has appeared in America no novel to rival the veracity of this childhood. It is as honest as Dreiser's Dawn, but far more sensitive and ably written. It is as brilliant as Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, but with a wider scope, a richer emotion, a deeper realism."---Alfred Hayes, author of All Thy Conquests

"For sheer virtuosity, Call It Sleep is hard to beat; no one has ever distilled such poetry and wit from the counterpoint between the maimed English and the subtle Yiddish of the immigrant. No one has reproduced so sensitively the terror of family life in the imagination of a child caught between two cultures."---Leslie A. Fiedler, author of The Life and Death of the Great American Novel

Henry Roth (1906--1995) was born in the Austro-Hungarian province of Galitzia. He probably landed on Ellis Island in 1909, and began his life in New York on the Lower East Side in the slums where Call It Sleep is set. He is the author as well of Shifting Landscapes, a collection of essays, and the Mercy of a Rude Stream tetralogy.



About the Author
Henry Roth (1906-1995) was born in the Austro- Hungarian province of Galitzia. He probably landed on Ellis Island in 1909 and began his life in New York on the Lower East Side, in the slums where Call It Sleep is set. He is the author as well of Shifting Landscapes, a collection of essays, and the Mercy of a Rude Stream tetralogy.

ANNOTATION

First published in 1934, and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, this is a novel of Jewish life full of the pain and honesty of family relationships. It holds the distinction of being the first paperback ever to receive a front-page review in The New York Times Book Review, and it became a nationwide bestseller. Now, for the first time, it is available in both cloth and paper.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Henry Roth published Call It Sleep, his first novel, in 1934, it was greeted with critical acclaim. But in that dark Depression year, books were hard to sell, and the novel quickly dropped out of sight, as did its twenty-eight-year-old author. Only with its paperback publication in 1964 did the novel receive the recognition it deserves. Call It Sleep was the first paperback ever to be reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, and it proceeded to sell millions of copies both in the United States and around the world.

FROM THE CRITICS

AudioFile - Sheldon Kaye