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  • Published: 23 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241950456
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $30.00

For Esmé - with Love and Squalor

And Other Stories




A collection of nine exceptional short stories from the 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 from home 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 J. D. 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 is a gem to be passed down for many generations to come.

  • Published: 23 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241950456
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $30.00

About the author

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger, born New York City, Jan. 1, 1919, established his reputation on the basis of a single novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), whose principal character, Holden Caulfield, epitomized the growing pains of a generation of high school and college students. The public attention that followed the success of the book led Salinger to move from New York to the remote hills of Cornish, N.H. Before that he had published only a few short stories; one of them, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1949, introduced readers to Seymour Glass, a character who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Salinger's only other published books. Of his 35 published short stories, those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories (1953).

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