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About the author
Nathanael West (October 17, 1903 - December 22, 1940) was born in New York City and worked as a hotel night manager and as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. His other novels include The Dream Life of Balso Snell, A Cool Million, and The Day of the Locust.
Summary
Day after day, 'Miss Lonelyhearts' sits in his office responding to letters from 'Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, and Desperate', dispensing words of hope, inspiration, and other platitudes to get his readers through their tormented days.
But it's all getting to be too much for Miss Lonelyhearts. Under the weight of his colleagues' mockery and the endless gloom of his correspondence, Miss Lonelyhearts finds himself crippled with cynicism and dysfunction.
Set in New York City at the height of the Great Depression, Miss Lonelyhearts stands as one of the most intelligent and hilarious works of the 20th Century. Laced with dark humour, irony, and razor-sharp insight, this novel is as hauntingly relevant today as it was nearly a hundred years ago.
Foreword
'Rendered with scalpel-precision . . . Nathanael West's masterpiece is a mercilessly unsympathetic novel on the theme of sympathy.' - Jonathan Lethem
