Main Street

It was with "Main Street" that the worldwide fame of Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), one of the greatest American prose writers of the 20th century and the first American laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, began.
This large-scale and extraordinarily accurate... description of the life of the American "middle class" deeply penetrates the characters and destinies of the heroes. The central image of the novel is a young university graduate, Carol, who marries a provincial doctor and settles in a small town, the Main Street of which serves as a metaphor for the morals and lifestyle of "middle" America. Carol is full of energy and desire to stir the monotonous existence of the townspeople, but how can she triumph over Main Street?

Such a healthy, thorough, and satirical approach has been lacking in American public thought and literature until now. Every country has its own Main Street, which is in acute need of diagnosis, but America has been fortunate to find such a perceptive and fair researcher in you.
John Galsworthy

I have never written anything with as much passion as "Main Street"… I hope this book will outlive its time.
Sinclair Lewis