'There was a glory in the world- life was panting for his embrace' Eugene Gant, born in the shadow of the mountains to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial Eliza, grows up in small-town America. Both lonely outsider and sensitive observer of American life, Eugene experiences upheaval and family tragedy before coming to realise that he must leave his home behind if he is to forge his own path. Thomas Wolfe's autobiographical first novel is a wild, epic chronicle of family, inheritance and identity, from one of the most vital and mercurial voices of early twentieth-century literature. With an Introduction by Elizabeth Kostova'Language as rich and ambitious and intensely American as any of our novelists has ever accomplished.' Charles Frazier