Penguin Modern Classics: The Ballad Of The Sad Cafe

Few writers have expressed loneliness, the need for human understanding and the search for love with such power and poetic sensibility as the American writer Carson McCullers.In The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, a tale of unrequited love, Miss Amelia, a spirited, unconventional woman, runs a small town store and, except for a marriage that lasted just ten days, has always lived alone. Then Cousin Lymon appears from nowhere, a little, strutting hunchback who steals Miss Amelia’s heart. Together they transform the store into a lively, popular cafe. But when her rejected husband Marvin Macy returns, the result is a bizarre love triangle that brings with it violence, hatred and betrayal.