Joyce Carol Oates adds to her extraordinary body of work with this stunning National Book Award Finalist filled with violence, love, racism, and a shared secret in mid-century New York.
In the early 1950s in an industrial town, racial boundaries may keep people apart—or bring them together explosively. Iris Courtney, who is white, is the only witness when handsome Jinx Fairchild, a black basketball player, kills a white man in order to protect her.
The secret link between Iris and Jinx is not only their attraction to each other, but a bond of passion and guilt that has formed between them. This one irrevocable, tragic act shapes their lives and alters their destinies in Joyce Carol Oates’s finest, emotion-packed novel—a work critics call a masterpiece, the best work of America’s best writer of contemporary realism.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of a National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barack Obama, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina, the Cino Del Duca World Prize, and is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the bestsellers Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she won the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award given to "a master of the thriller and noir literary genre."
View titles by Joyce Carol Oates
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Praise for Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
“Fiction of extraordinary imaginative power.”—Marilynne Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
“An impressive performance...fearless....There seems to be no erotic passion, no violence of act or language, no addiction, no fatal failure of nerve that is beyond Oates’s reach when it comes to rendering it in fiction.”—Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
“Oates is a master novelist....Thrilling momentum...it’s hard to stop reading.”—USA Today
Joyce Carol Oates adds to her extraordinary body of work with this stunning National Book Award Finalist filled with violence, love, racism, and a shared secret in mid-century New York.
In the early 1950s in an industrial town, racial boundaries may keep people apart—or bring them together explosively. Iris Courtney, who is white, is the only witness when handsome Jinx Fairchild, a black basketball player, kills a white man in order to protect her.
The secret link between Iris and Jinx is not only their attraction to each other, but a bond of passion and guilt that has formed between them. This one irrevocable, tragic act shapes their lives and alters their destinies in Joyce Carol Oates’s finest, emotion-packed novel—a work critics call a masterpiece, the best work of America’s best writer of contemporary realism.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of a National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barack Obama, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award in Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina, the Cino Del Duca World Prize, and is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the bestsellers Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emerita at Princeton University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she won the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award given to "a master of the thriller and noir literary genre."
View titles by Joyce Carol Oates
Rights
Available for sale exclusive:
• Canada
• Guam
• Minor Outl.Ins.
• North Mariana
• Philippines
• Puerto Rico
• Samoa,American
• US Virgin Is.
• USA
Available for sale non-exclusive:
• Afghanistan
• Aland Islands
• Albania
• Algeria
• Andorra
• Angola
• Antarctica
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Aruba
• Austria
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Belarus
• Belgium
• Benin
• Bermuda
• Bhutan
• Bolivia
• Bonaire, Saba
• Bosnia Herzeg.
• Botswana
• Bouvet Island
• Brazil
• Brit.Ind.Oc.Ter
• Brunei
• Bulgaria
• Burkina Faso
• Burundi
• Cambodia
• Cape Verde
• Centr.Afr.Rep.
• Chad
• Chile
• China
• Christmas Islnd
• Cocos Islands
• Colombia
• Comoro Is.
• Congo
• Cook Islands
• Costa Rica
• Croatia
• Cuba
• Curacao
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Dem. Rep. Congo
• Denmark
• Djibouti
• Dominican Rep.
• Ecuador
• El Salvador
• Equatorial Gui.
• Eritrea
• Estonia
• Ethiopia
• Falkland Islnds
• Faroe Islands
• Finland
• France
• Fren.Polynesia
• French Guinea
• Gabon
• Gambia
• Georgia
• Germany
• Gibraltar
• Greece
• Greenland
• Guadeloupe
• Guatemala
• Guinea Republic
• Guinea-Bissau
• Haiti
• Heard/McDon.Isl
• Honduras
• Hong Kong
• Hungary
• Iceland
• India
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Israel
• Italy
• Ivory Coast
• Japan
• Kazakhstan
• Kiribati
• Kuwait
• Kyrgyzstan
• Laos
• Latvia
• Lebanon
• Lesotho
• Liberia
• Libya
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Macau
• Macedonia
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Malaysia
• Maldives
• Mali
• Malta
• Marshall island
• Mauritania
• Mauritius
• Mayotte
• Mexico
• Micronesia
• Moldavia
• Monaco
• Mongolia
• Montenegro
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Myanmar
• Nauru
• Nepal
• Netherlands
• New Caledonia
• Nicaragua
• Niger
• Niue
• Norfolk Island
• North Korea
• Norway
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Palau
• Palestinian Ter
• Panama
• PapuaNewGuinea
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Pitcairn Islnds
• Poland
• Portugal
• Qatar
• Reunion Island
• Romania
• Russian Fed.
• Rwanda
• S. Sandwich Ins
• Saint Martin
• San Marino
• SaoTome Princip
• Saudi Arabia
• Senegal
• Serbia
• Seychelles
• Singapore
• Sint Maarten
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Solomon Islands
• Somalia
• South Korea
• South Sudan
• Spain
• Sri Lanka
• St Barthelemy
• St. Helena
• St.Pier,Miquel.
• Sth Terr. Franc
• Sudan
• Suriname
• Svalbard
• Swaziland
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Syria
• Tadschikistan
• Taiwan
• Tanzania
• Thailand
• Timor-Leste
• Togo
• Tokelau Islands
• Tonga
• Tunisia
• Turkey
• Turkmenistan
• Tuvalu
• Uganda
• Ukraine
• Unit.Arab Emir.
• Uruguay
• Uzbekistan
• Vanuatu
• Vatican City
• Venezuela
• Vietnam
• Wallis,Futuna
• West Saharan
• Western Samoa
• Yemen
Not available for sale:
• Anguilla
• Antigua/Barbuda
• Australia
• Bahamas
• Barbados
• Belize
• Brit.Virgin Is.
• Cameroon
• Cayman Islands
• Dominica
• Egypt
• Fiji
• Ghana
• Grenada
• Guernsey
• Guyana
• Iraq
• Ireland
• Isle of Man
• Jamaica
• Jersey
• Jordan
• Kenya
• Martinique
• Montserrat
• Namibia
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa
• St. Lucia
• St. Vincent
• St.Chr.,Nevis
• Trinidad,Tobago
• Turks&Caicos Is
• United Kingdom
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe
Praise
Praise for Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
“Fiction of extraordinary imaginative power.”—Marilynne Robinson, The New York Times Book Review
“An impressive performance...fearless....There seems to be no erotic passion, no violence of act or language, no addiction, no fatal failure of nerve that is beyond Oates’s reach when it comes to rendering it in fiction.”—Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
“Oates is a master novelist....Thrilling momentum...it’s hard to stop reading.”—USA Today
