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The Room
  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141195674
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99

The Room

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Selby's disorienting, nightmarish and structurally inventive novel, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time

'It is quite an experience to be locked up all by yourself in any size room' says the anonymous narrator of Hubert Selby Jr.'s second novel. What follows is a startling series of recollections and fantasies that illuminate the workings of a prisoner's unhinged mind. He yearns for his violent childhood, rages against obscure authorities, and imagines enacting horrible revenge on those who imprisoned him. The prisoner's remand cell becomes the scene of a surreal mental torture.

Disorienting, nightmarish and structurally inventive, The Room is a shocking examination of the suffering humans can inflict on each other.
  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141195674
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $24.99
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Also by Hubert Selby Jr.

The Willow Tree
Requiem for a Dream
Song of the Silent Snow
The Demon
Last Exit to Brooklyn
See all

Praise for The Room

Selby's best book

The TLS

A terrifying journey into the darkest corners of the psyche

Guardian

Selby deploys street slang, common speech, argot and scatology to create a high poetic art...it seems to derive from the greatest American poetry--Whitman, Pound, Williams, and Olson

The Nation

One must be grateful to Selby for his fatal vision and strong, original talent

Newsweek

'Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America.'

New York Times Book Review

It's absolutely horrific ... but just about the most powerful novel I've ever read

The Times