Sophie’s Choice: A Contemporary Casebook

Sophie’s Choice: A Contemporary Casebook is a collection of interpretations and reactions to William Styron’s famous 1979 novel of the Holocaust. Sophie’s Choice won the American Book Award and sold more than three million copies worldwide, but the novel has remained controversial for its perceived treatment of women, its mixing of sexual comedy with high tragedy, and its legitimacy as an examination of the Holocaust. The items in the casebook are divided into three sections: Sexual Politics, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and Silence. Contributors include Pearl K. Bell, Gloria Steinem, Carolyn A. Durham, Barbara T. Lupack, Richard L. Rubenstein, Cynthia Ozick, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and Elie Wiesel. The collection is framed by a foreword and an afterword, both by Styron. This casebook will be useful to teachers, students, and scholars; it brings together important commentaries on Sophie’s Choice, focuses discussion on key themes and issues, and argues for the central place of the novel in late twentieth-century literature.