Author(s): Truman Capote

Classics

From the Modern Library's new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote--also available are "In Cold Blood, Portraits and Observations, "and "The Complete Stories"
Together in one volume, here are a pair of literary touchstones from Truman Capote's extraordinary early career: the transcendently popular novella "Breakfast at Tiffany's "and "Other Voices, Other Rooms, "the debut novel he published as a twenty-three-year-old prodigy.
Of all his characters, Capote once said, Holly Golightly was his favorite. The hillbilly-turned-Manhattanite at the center of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" shares not only the author's philosophy of freedom but also his fears and anxieties. For Holly, the cure is to jump into a taxi and head for Tiffany's; nothing bad could happen, she believes, amid "that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets."
"Other Voices, Other Rooms" begins as thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to rural Alabama to live with his estranged father--who is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his eccentric family and finds a kindred spirit in a defiant little girl. Despite its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence, this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel revels in small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.