Unknown Masterpieces

“This compilation will serve admirably as a springboard for contemporary audiences, inspiring them to borrow these classics from the library. The essays themselves, by writers ranging from John Updike and Toni Morrison to Jonathan Lethem and Colm Tóibín, are uniformly insightful and interesting; several are outstanding, even compelling.” —Library Journal “Read long enough—20 or 30 years, say—and you realize that “classics” is a mighty malleable word. Passionate readers all have classics of their own: books they return to again and again, whether the rest of the world is reading them or not. New York Review Books, in its wonderful reprint series NYRB Classics, picks up on that readerly passion with an eclectic lineup of backlist titles, all prefaced by authors who (for the moment) are better known than the writers they’re introducing. Now 13 of those prefaces have been gathered in Unknown Masterpieces: Writers Rediscover Literature’s Hidden Classics, edited by Edwin Frank….Looking for reading suggestions? Here’s a good place to start.” —Michael Upchurch, Times/Post Intelligencer “When Morrison recommends Laye’s mystical adventure in context with a discussion of ‘literary Africa,’ you might want to find a copy. And Francine Prose is right on when she writes of the disorienting effect of Richard Hughes’ ‘luminous, extraordinary’ A High Wind in Jamaica, with its reversal of expectations, ‘a warning scent of danger and blood.’” —The Orlando Sentinel “13 writers, including Francine Prose, Susan Sontag, John Updike, James Wood and Elizabeth Hardwick, give us—joyfully…—an insight into books they cannot allow to fall into further obscurity. These are true discoveries, even if their authors are sometimes familiar: On the Yard by Malcolm Braly; Hindoo Holiday by J. R. Ackerly; The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott.” —The Los Angeles Times

Edwin Frank is the Editorial Director of NYRB Classics.

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