by John Barth (Author)
Written when John Barth was 24 years old, The Floating Opera is his first novel, published in 1957. It is a first-person reminiscence of the day Todd Andrews decided to commit suicide. Having picked up some sense of the French Existentialist writers from the postwar Zeitgeist, this novel questions life's value through the eyes of a 37-year-old man.
Author Biography
John Barth was born in Cambridge, Maryland in 1930. He stands alongside Thomas Pynchon as one of the innovative giants of post-war fiction. He is the author of The Sot-Weed Factor, The Tidewater Tales, Lost in the Funhouse, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor and the National Book Award winner Chimera. He taught for many years on the writing programme at John Hopkins University