1930s 20th-c 20th-century adventure america american american-fiction american-lit american-literature autobiography childhood city classic classics coming-of-age contemporary fiction freud immigrants immigration jewish jewish-fiction judaica judaism literary literature modernism new-york new-york-city novel novels nyc psychology roth school swedish us working-class

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.