Tropic of Capricorn

by Henry Miller

Published 1 February 1966
The controversial, erotic and hilarious companion to the legendary Tropic of Cancer, in a smart new Perennial Modern Classics edition. A riotous and explosive mixture of joys and frustrations, Tropic of Capricorn chronicles Miller's early life in New York, from his repressive Brooklyn childhood spent amongst 'a galaxy of screwballs' to frantic, hilarious years of dead-end jobs and innumerable erotic adventures. Irreverent and ironic, Tropic of Capricorn is both a comic portrait of the irrepressible Miller himself and a scathing attack on respectable America, the very foundations of which he hoped to shatter. Publication of Tropic of Capricorn and its sister-volume Tropic of Cancer in Paris in the 1930s was hailed by Samuel Beckett as 'a momentous event in the history of modern writing'. The books were subsequently banned in the UK and the USA for nearly thirty years.

Tropic of Cancer

by Henry Miller

Published May 1965

Miller’s groundbreaking first novel, banned in Britain for almost thirty years.

A penniless and as yet unpublished writer, Henry Miller arrived in Paris in 1930. Leaving behind a disintegrating marriage and an unhappy career in America, he threw himself into the low-life of bohemian Paris with unwavering gusto. A fictional account of Miller’s adventures amongst the prostitutes and pimps, the penniless painters and writers of Montparnasse, Tropic of Cancer is an extravagant and rhapsodic hymn to a world of unrivalled eroticism and freedom.

Tropic of Cancer’s 1934 publication in France was hailed by Samuel Beckett as `a momentous event in the history of modern writing’. The novel was subsequently banned in the UK and the USA and not released for publication for a further thirty years.