The Holocaust becomes a breathtaking personal drama, in the midst of a vast cataclysm, in William Styron's Sophie's Choice, a big and questing novel with autobiographical elements and a fearless determination to explore a particular human dimension of a historical nightmare. The novel speaks through the voice of Styron's alter ego, a polite young Tidewater Virginian called Stingo who comes to New York in 1947 in the hopes of being a writer. With a small legacy …showed first 75 words of 740 total…

…showed last 75 words of 740 total…his own knowledge of oppression that occurred in the American South. The characters are powerfully and engagingly drawn, often with wit and humor, and the novel speaks with great humanity. "It belongs on that small shelf reserved or American masterpieces," Paul Fussell wrote in the Washington Post Book World. "'Sophie's Choice' is in the main stream of the American novel. Like 'A Portrait of a Lady' or 'The Great Gatsby,' it is ... wonderfully human."