The Enormous Room

Cummings' autobiographical novel of his Great War captivity

Author

Publisher

Printing Details

Hardback in original dustwrapper. 17 × 11cm, 332pp.

In 1917, young Edward Estlin Cummings went to France as a volunteer with a Red Cross ambulance unit on the western front. But his free-spirited, insubordinate ways soon got him tagged as a possible enemy of La Patrie, and he was summarily tossed into a French concentration camp at La Ferte-Mace in Normandy. Under the vilest conditions, Cummings found fulfillment of his ever elusive quest for freedom. The Enormous Room, his account of his four-month confinement, is like a latter-day Pilgrim's Progress, a journey into dispossession, to a place among the most debased and deprived of human creatures. Cummings's hopeful tone reflects the essential paradox of his existence: to lose everything is to become free, and so to be saved.

Condition

The book is in very good condition, the dustwrapper has a little light wear and has been price-clipped but is now within a protective sleeve.