J. D. Salinger was born in 1919 and died in January 2010. He grew up in New York City and wrote short stories from an early age, but his breakthrough came in 1948 with the publication in the New Yorker of 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'. The Catcher in the Rye was his first and only novel, published in 1951. It remains one of the most translated, taught and reprinted texts, and has sold over 65 million copies worldwide. He went on to write three further, critically acclaimed, best-selling works of fiction:
Franny and Zooey, For Esmé - With Love And Squalor and
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour - An Introduction. Salinger continued to write throughout his life and left behind a large body of unpublished work.
A collection of nine exceptional stories from the much-loved author of The Catcher in the Rye
An American soldier has a strange encounter with an orphaned English teenager the night before he leaves for war. A four-year-old boy runs away in a dinghy; a missionary's child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. A honeymoon in Florida goes awry with tragic consequences. Including the first stories to feature Salinger's beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century.
Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esmé - with Love and Squalor sits alongside Salinger's very best work - a gem that will be passed down for many generations to come.
