The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

Overview

First published in 1899, this controversial novel of a New Orleans wife's search for love outside a stifling marriage shocked readers. Today, it remains a first-rate narrative with superb characterization. New introductory note.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486277868
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	11/04/1993
Series:	Dover Thrift Editions
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	39,911
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	960L (what's this?)

About the Author

A precursor of the 20th century's feminist authors, Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote short stories and novels for children and adults. The St. Louis native lived in New Orleans for a dozen years and set most of her tales amid Louisiana's Creole culture. Many of her stories were well ahead of their time, and she achieved widespread acclaim only after her death.

Read an Excerpt

THE AWAKENING
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Awakening"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Kate Chopin.
Excerpted by permission of Melville House.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Shelly Frasier's reading is thick with languor and sensuality as she creates an Edna who feels all but physically present."—-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
—Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer

"Small wonders."
—Time Out London

"[F]irst-rate…astutely selected and attractively packaged…indisputably great works."
—Adam Begley, The New York Observer

"I’ve always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it’s the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher’s fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
—The New Yorker

"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed—tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."
—KQED (NPR San Francisco)

"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."
—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

This landmark feminist novel, first published in 1899, remains startlingly relevant

Elle - JUDY BLUME

A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's

WILLA CATHER

Chopin's slight, brittle and fierce novel became a classic and a cult, shocking readers with its candid and unsentimental portrait of marital infidelity . . . it remains delicately bitter and acidly angry

Observer

Even more powerful than I remembered

MARGARET DRABBLE

Sometimes bold, fearless writing really does have to wait for 'someone in some future time' for readers yet to come. Sleeping Beauties, once awakened, will always serve a contemporary agenda. But Chopin's The Awakening is now justly regarded as an American classic and read with passion and delight

Literary Review

Chopin's deceptively slight novel is the kind of book revolutions are made of . . . Reissued with a forward by Barbara Kingsolver, this angry, eye-opening novel is well worth adding to your reading list

Harper's Bazaar

I still marvel at Chopin's realism, her impatience with conventional trappings, her arresting honesty

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Incisive, brilliant and haunting

MAGGIE O'FARRELL

The Awakening is not only one of the most important novels in the history of American women's writing, it is an acknowledged American masterpiece . . . Chopin offers a compelling portrait of female experience, one of the first of its kind

SARAH CHURCHWELL

A quietly explosive study of female impotence, it is quite superb

Independent on Sunday

Plucky and masterly

The Lady

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