Gravity's Rainbow

Penguin Classics/ Deluxe Edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 776, [2]. Illustrated wraps with French-fold flaps; untrimmed fore-edges. Cover art by Frank Miller in a jacket design by Paul Buckley. First published by The Viking Press in 1973.

'A screaming comes across the sky.' Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal (for the best work of fiction to appear in the U.S. over a five-year time span), joint winner of the 1974 National Book Award, and a 1973 Nebula Award nominee. Listed in TIME Magazine's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. A Burgess 99 title.

Reclusive author's divisive magnum opus, a sprawling, multi-layered, landmark novel, set at the tail-end of World War II and centering on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the Luftwaffe. "[F]illed with descriptions of obsessive and paranoid fantasies, ridiculous and grotesque imagery, and esoteric mathematical and scientific language" (Britannica), the Pulitzer Advisory Board went further, branding it "'unreadable', 'turgid', 'overwritten', and in parts 'obscene'", and rejecting the unanimous recommendation of its jury, in the process awarding no Fiction Prize in 1974. "The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II." –The New Republic