> Skip to content
  • Published: 13 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241988794
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
Categories:

The Catcher in the Rye




The Catcher in the Rye is J . D. Salinger's world-famous novel of disaffected youth.

It's Christmas and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters - shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends.

The city is beautiful and terrible in all its lonesome neon glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic coming-of-age story: an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

  • Published: 13 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241988794
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 240
Categories:

About the author

J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger, born New York City, Jan. 1, 1919, established his reputation on the basis of a single novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), whose principal character, Holden Caulfield, epitomized the growing pains of a generation of high school and college students. The public attention that followed the success of the book led Salinger to move from New York to the remote hills of Cornish, N.H. Before that he had published only a few short stories; one of them, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1949, introduced readers to Seymour Glass, a character who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Salinger's only other published books. Of his 35 published short stories, those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories (1953).

Also by J. D. Salinger

See all

Praise for The Catcher in the Rye

I liked it very much indeed, more than anything for a long time.

Samuel Beckett
penguin pop image
penguin pop image