Manhattan Transfer

“Reading [John Dos Passos], I wanted to thrust his books upon everyone because they read as if they were written yesterday—under the heavy influence of caffeine, hope, and yearning.”—Dave Eggers



“A powerful and sustained piece of work…from an American Joyce.”—The New York Times

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 in 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.