Day of the Grasshopper

Wildly funny, helplessly sad, cruel and kind, angry and patient; There is no one like Nathanael West.” 

-Dorothy Parker-

The Day of the Grasshopper turns into a nightmare under the scorching sun of Hollywood and California after the Great Depression. It's about the transforming American dream. A failed painter, a macho cowboy, a naive countryman, a beautiful but untalented starlet, prostitutes, cockfighters... Nathanael West draws the portrait of a group of doomed, hopeless and corrupt characters struggling to survive in the shadow of bright stars in a grotesque style.

The Day of the Grasshopper, published in the same year as Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and John Fante's Ask the Dust, is considered, along with these two novels, to be among the masterpieces that still best reflect Los Angeles today. The novel, one of the unforgettable heroes of which is Homer Simpson in The Simpsons, inspired many writers, was also made into a movie in 1975.

The Day of the Grasshopper, which is on the list of the best novels written in English by many critics, mocks reality and glorifies falsity. , is a timeless novel with its mastery in depicting a world that is the victim of the brutal violence of its own making and its simple but harsh language.

“The Day of the Grasshopper, which is like a polaroid photograph of its period, shining under the sun,  a perpetual prophecy.”

-Jonathan Lethem-

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Editor: Zeynep Tür

Cover Design: Emir Tali

Size: 13.5 x 19.5

First Printing Year: 2017

Number of Prints:1. Printing

Number of Pages: 190