Author: Henry Miller
Date: 1939
Genre: Autobiographical Novel
Country: France
A prequel to Miller’s 1934 work, the Tropic of Cancer. The novel is set in 1920s New York, where the narrator ‘Henry V. Miller’ works in the personnel division of the ‘Cosmodemonic’ telegraph company. Although the narrator’s experiences closely parallel Miller’s own time in New York working for the Western Union Telegraph Company, and though he shares the author’s name, the novel is considered a work of fiction. Much of the story surrounds his New York years of struggle with his first wife Beatrice, before meeting, and eventually marrying, June.