The Ballad of the Sad Café

by Carson McCullers

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Book cover for The Ballad of the Sad Café

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'Brilliant ... a panorama of a remarkable talent ... McCullers's finest stories' The New York Times

Few writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers, and The Ballad of the Sad Café collects her best-loved novella together with six short stories, published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Miss Amelia Evans, tall, strong and nobody's fool, runs a small-town store. Except for a disastrous marriage that lasted just ten days, she has always lived alone. Then Cousin Lymon appears from nowhere, a strutting hunchback who steals Miss Amelia's heart. Together they transform the store into a lively, popular café where the locals come to drink and gossip. But when her rejected and dangerous ex-husband Marvin Macy returns, the result is a bizarre love triangle that brings with it violence, hatred and betrayal. Among other fine works, the collection also includes 'Wunderkind', McCullers's first published story written when she was only seventeen, about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist.

  • ISBN10 0141183691
  • ISBN13 9780141183695
  • Publish Date 29 March 2001 (first published December 1958)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
  • Imprint Penguin Classics
  • Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
  • Pages 160
  • Language English