Other Voices, Other Rooms

Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old,Other Voices, Other Roomsis a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully's Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks. Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote's tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place. This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capote's emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace. From the Hardcover edition.

TRUMAN CAPOTE was born September 30, 1924, in New Orleans. After his parents’ divorce, he was sent to live with relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. It was here he would meet his lifelong friend, the author Harper Lee. With the 1948 publication of Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote was catapulted onto the international literary scene and for nearly four decades was a fixture in New York literati and high society circles. Twice awarded the O. Henry Short Story Prize, Capote was also the recipient of a National Institute of Arts and Letters Creative Writing Award and an Edgar Award. Among his many celebrated works are the short-story collection The Grass Harp, the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the memoirs A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor, and the true-crime masterpiece In Cold Blood. Capote died in 1984, just weeks shy of his sixtieth birthday.

JOHN BERENDT is the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. His work has also appeared in Esquire and New York, where he was also an editor. He lives in New York City.


From the Hardcover edition.