The Marriage Guest

New York: Boni & Liveright. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1925. 3rd printing. Hardcover. [a nice copy with only minimal shelfwear; the jacket has a short closed tear at the bottom of the front panel, a little nick at each end of the spine, which is also slightly browned]. The Romanian-American author's first novel, following half a dozen collections of short stories (overwhemingly about Gypsy life, the subject with which his name will always be linked), a couple of non-fiction books, and a play. Subtitled (on the jacket) "A Novel of New York," it's set in the German quarter of New York's East Side. From a contemporary newspaper review (unsigned): "The story is woven around Greta, the daughter of Anton Zwenge, a German fiddle maker and repairer living on the east side of New York. Greta falls in love with a composer, but the practical side of her nature, together with the importunities of her mother, bid her marry a rising young contractor. She early learns her mistake and is able to keep her marriage vows only by imagining her husband to be the musician. So the daughter born to them is the physical child of the contractor and the spiritual child of the musician." Uncommon in jacket. Hanna 325. ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-Fiction." .