Editing Sophie's Choice (novel)

{{Short description|1979 novel by William Styron}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book 
|name          = Sophie's Choice
|image         = Image:SophiesChoice.jpg
|caption       = First edition
|author        = [[William Styron]]
|country       = United States
|language      = English
|genre         = 
|publisher     = [[Random House]]
|pub_date      = 1979
|pages         = 562
|isbn          = 0-394-46109-6
|oclc          = 4593241
|preceded_by   = 
|followed_by   =
}}
'''''Sophie's Choice''''' is a 1979 novel by American author [[William Styron]], the author's last novel. It concerns the relationships among three people sharing a boarding house in [[Brooklyn]]: Stingo, a young aspiring writer from the [[Southern United States|South]]; Jewish scientist Nathan Landau; and the latter's [[Eponym|eponymous]] lover Sophie, a [[Catholic Church in Poland|Polish-Catholic]] survivor of the German [[Nazi concentration camps]], whom Stingo befriends.

''Sophie's Choice'' won the US [[National Book Award for Fiction]] in 1980.<ref>{{Cite web|title=National Book Awards 1980|url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1980/|access-date=2020-06-02|website=National Book Foundation|language=en-US}}</ref> The novel was the basis of a 1982 [[Sophie's Choice (film)|film of the same name]]. It was controversial for the way in which it framed Styron's personal views regarding the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]].

==Synopsis==
Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first book, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher [[McGraw-Hill]] and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. The beautiful Sophie is [[Polish people|Polish]], [[Catholic Church|Catholic]], and a survivor of the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]] and [[Nazi]] [[concentration camp]]s and Nathan is [[Jewish-American]] and purportedly a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a [[Harvard University|Harvard]] graduate and a [[cellular biologist]] with a pharmaceutical company, it is revealed that this story is a fabrication. Almost no one—including Sophie and Stingo—knows that Nathan has [[paranoid schizophrenia]] and that he is abusing [[stimulant]]s. He sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, but there are times when he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive, and [[delusion]]al.

As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past. She describes her violently [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] father, a law professor in [[Kraków]]; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]]; and particularly her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of [[Rudolf Höss]], the commander of [[Auschwitz]], where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss to persuade him that her blond, blue-eyed, German-speaking son should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the [[Lebensborn]] program, in which he would be raised as a German child. She failed in this attempt and ultimately never learned of her son's fate. Only at the end of the book does the reader learn what became of Sophie's daughter, Eva.

Eventually, Nathan's delusions lead him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both. As Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee New York, Sophie reveals her deepest secret: On the night that she arrives at Auschwitz, a camp doctor makes her choose which of her two children will die immediately by [[Gas chamber|gassing]] and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her eight-year-old daughter, Eva, in a decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now alcoholic and deeply depressed, Sophie is willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite Stingo proposing marriage and a shared night that relieves Stingo of his virginity and fulfills many of his sexual fantasies, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she must return to Nathan.

Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo is devastated to discover that Sophie and Nathan have killed themselves by ingesting [[Cyanide poisoning#Suicide|sodium cyanide]].

==Themes and inspirations==
===Themes===
Sylvie Mathé notes that Styron's "position" in the writing of this novel was made clear in his contemporary interviews and essays, in the latter case, in particular "Auschwitz", "Hell Reconsidered", and "A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle",<ref name=Mathe04/> and quotes Alvin Rosenfeld's summary of Styron's position, where Rosenfeld states that:<ref name=Rosenfeld79>Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (1979) "The Holocaust According to William Styron," ''Midstream,'' Vol. 25, No. 10 (December), pp. 43-49.</ref>
{{blockquote|sign=|source=|(1) while [Styron] acknowledges Jewish suffering under the Nazis, he insists on seeing Auschwitz in general or universalistic terms, as a murderous thrust against "mankind" or "the entire human family"; (2) in line with the above, he sees his own role as "correcting" the view that the Holocaust was directed solely or exclusively against the Jews by focusing attention on the many Christians, and particularly the Slavs, who also perished in the camps; (3) … Auschwitz was "anti-Christian" as well as "anti-Semitic", and hence assertions of Christian guilt are misplaced and perhaps even unnecessary; (4) since he rejects historical explanations of Christian anti-Semitism as causative, Styron is drawn to the view, set forth by Richard Rubenstein and others … that in its essential character Auschwitz was a capitalistic slave society as much as or even more than it was an extermination center; and (5) viewed against European examples of barbarism and slavery, epitomized by Auschwitz, the American South's treatment of the blacks looks pretty good and "… seems benevolent by comparison".<ref name=Mathe04/><ref name=Rosenfeld79/>}}

Rosenfeld, summarizing, states, "The drift of these revisionist [sic] views, all of which culminate in Sophie's Choice, is to take the Holocaust out of Jewish and Christian history and place it within a generalized history of evil."<ref name=Rosenfeld79/>{{rp|44}} Mathé reinforces Rosenfeld's conclusion with a quote from Styron himself, who noted in his "Hell Reconsidered" essay that "the titanic and sinister forces at work in history and in modern life… threaten all men, not only Jews."<ref name="StyronHell78">Styron, William (1978) "Hell Reconsidered," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' [1982], pp. 105-115, New York, NY, USA: Random House, {{ISBN|0-394-50934-X}}, {{ISBN|978-0-394-50934-1}}, see [https://archive.org/details/thisquietdust00will], accessed 7 November 2015.</ref>{{rp|114}} She goes on to note that Styron's choices to represent these ideas, and to incorporate them so clearly into the narrative of his novel, resulted in polemic and controversy that continued, at least into the early years of the new millennium.<ref name=Mathe04/>

===Plot inspiration===
''Sophie's Choice'' is said to have been partly based on the author's time in Brooklyn, where he met a refugee from Poland,<ref>to-the-brooklyn-of-sophie-s-choice.html</ref> and he is said to have visited Auschwitz while researching the novel.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news| author = AP Staff | date = 3 December 2002 | title='Sophie's Choice' gets Jewish Group's Award | agency = [[Associated Press]] | via = [[The Gainesville Sun]] | url=http://www.gainesville.com/news/20021204/sophies-choice-gets-jewish-groups-award | access-date = 2 May 2023 | language=en}}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}</ref>

[[Alexandra Styron]], the author's daughter, published the following  account in [[The New Yorker]] in 2007: {{blockquote|Sophie had come to him in a dream, Daddy always said. Not much older than I am now, he had woken up in Connecticut and been unable to shake the image of a woman he once knew. She’d lived above him in Flatbush, in the boarding house he immortalized as Yetta Zimmerman’s Pink Palace. She was a Holocaust survivor, as evidenced by her wrist tattoo, Polish and beautiful, but more than that he didn’t know. Her boyfriend was American, but undistinguished. After the book came out, I used to answer the phone at home so my father wouldn’t have to. More than once, women with heavy accents explained the nature of their call in tearful and dramatic tones. “Daddy,” my notes would read, “a lady called. I can’t spell her name. She says she’s Sophie.” And a number somewhere in Michigan, or New Jersey.<ref>Styron, Alexandra (2 December 2007) [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/reading-my-father  "Reading My Father"]. ''The New Yorker'', accessed 22 Jan 2024</ref>}}

A central element of the novel's plot, the personally catastrophic choice referred to in the title, is said to have been inspired by a story of a Romani woman who was ordered by the Nazis to select which of her children was to be murdered, which Styron attributes{{citation needed|date=November 2015}} to [[Hannah Arendt]]'s ''[[Eichmann in Jerusalem]]''.<ref name="Mathe04" /> However, [[Ira Nadel]] claims that the story is found in Arendt's ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]].''<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Robin | first1=Corey | date=2015 | title=Hannah Arendt and Philip Roth: Parallel Lives | url=http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/09/hannah-arendt-and-philip-roth-parallel-lives/#more-36055 | journal = Crooked Timber (Blog, June 9) | access-date=4 November 2015}}{{better source needed|date=November 2015}}</ref> In that book, Arendt argues that those who ran the camps perpetrated an "attack on the moral person":{{blockquote|Totalitarian terror achieved its most terrible triumph when it succeeded in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape and in making the decisions of conscience absolutely questionable and equivocal. (...) Who could solve the moral dilemma of the Greek mother, who was allowed by the Nazis to choose which of her three children should be killed?<ref>{{cite book | last=Arendt | first=Hannah | date=1968 | title=The Origins of Totalitarianism (New Edition with Added Prefaces) | location=San Diego | publisher=Harcourt, Inc. | page=[https://archive.org/details/originsoftotali100aren/page/452 452] | isbn=0-15-670153-7 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/originsoftotali100aren/page/452 }}</ref>}}

Arendt cites [[Albert Camus]]' ''Twice a Year'' (1947) for the story, without providing a pinpoint reference.<ref>{{cite book | last=Arendt | first=Hannah | date=1968 | title=The Origins of Totalitarianism | location=San Diego | publisher=Harcourt, Inc. | page = 452 | url=https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1962.pdf#page=472 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215020659/https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1962.pdf#page=472 | archive-date=2017-02-15 }} See Note 154 on the cited page.</ref><ref>''Twice a Year'' was a 1946 book edition that contained the text of Camus' ''[[The Crisis of Man]]'' (French, ''La Crise de l'homme''), a work that gives the examples of four moral contradictions (including the Greek mother's exposure{{clarify|date = May 2023}}).{{citation needed|date = May 2023}}</ref><ref>Camus read this complete essay at [[Columbia University]] on March 28, 1946. See:
* {{cite web | last=Kühner | first=Wilhelm | title=Albert Camus on "The Human Crisis" | website=Medium | date=2019-05-20 | url=https://medium.com/k%C3%BChner-kommentar/albert-camus-on-the-human-crisis-5b61e9b6faf1 | access-date=2020-01-24}} and 
* {{cite web | author = Özkırımlı, Umut | date = April 18, 2018 | title='The Human Crisis' and Impossible Choices | website=Ahval | url=https://ahvalnews.com/morality/human-crisis-and-impossible-choices | access-date=2020-01-24}}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}, and links therein. 
The lecture was re-delivered 70 years later, at the same amphitheater, narrated by actor [[Viggo Mortensen]], see {{cite web | author = Maison Francaise Staff | date = February 2016 | title = 'The Human Crisis' by Albert Camus, 70 years later | work = maisonfrancaise.org | url = http://maisonfrancaise.org/ldquothe-human-crisisrdquo-by-albert-camus-70-years-later | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160226115430/http://maisonfrancaise.org/ldquothe-human-crisisrdquo-by-albert-camus-70-years-later | archive-date = 2016-02-26 | access-date = 2 May 2023 }}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}</ref>

==Reception and controversies==
===Awards and recognition===
{{expand section|with a much more full, source-based summary of the awards and recognition garnered by the work, and by the author for this work | small = no | date = May 2023}}
''Sophie's Choice'' won the U.S. [[National Book Award for Fiction]] in 1980.<ref name=nba1980>Weil, Robert (2009) "Sophie's Choice by William Styron, 1980" at ''National Book Association'' [Fiction Blog, August 14], see {{cite web |url=https://www.nbafictionblog.org/nba-winning-books-blog/1980-5.html |title=1980 - www.nbafictionblog.org - National Book Awards Fiction Winners |access-date=2015-11-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304031814/http://www.nbafictionblog.org/nba-winning-books-blog/1980-5.html |archive-date=2016-03-04 }}, accessed 7 November 2015.</ref><ref group = "note">This was the 1980 [[National Book Award for Fiction#1980 to 1989|award for hardcover general Fiction]], see [https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1980 National Book awards website]. The [[National Book Awards#History|National Book Awards]] there given for both hardcover and paperback in most categories from 1980 to 1983 and for [[List of winners of the National Book Award#Miscellaneous 1980 to 1985|multiple fiction categories]], especially in 1980. See {{cite web|access-date=2016-12-22|title=1980 National Book Awards Winners and Finalists, The National Book Foundation|url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1980|website=www.nationalbook.org}}</ref> Much later, in 2002, Styron would receive the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation's Witness to Justice Award.<ref name=":0" />

===Critical reception===
{{expand section|with a much more full, source-based summary of its critical reception, beyond the generally unrepresentative Gardner review | small = no | date = May 2023}}
In his review of the novel in the ''New York Times,'' [[John Gardner (American writer)|John Gardner]] takes it as an example of [[Southern Gothic]],{{dubious|date = May 2023}} writing that:<blockquote>[It] is a splendidly written, thrilling book, a philosophical novel on the most important subject of the 20th century. If it is not, for me, a hands-down literary masterpiece, the reason is that, in transferring the form of the Southern Gothic to this vastly larger subject, Styron has been unable to get rid of or even noticeably tone down those qualities—some superficial, some deep—in the Southern Gothic that have always made Yankees squirm.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/27/archives/a-novel-of-evil-styron.html|title=A Novel of Evil|last=Gardner|first=John|date=1979-05-27|work=The New York Times|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

===Controversies===
====At publication====
''Sophie's Choice'' generated significant controversy at time of its publication. Sylvie Mathé notes that ''Sophie's Choice'', which she refers to as a "highly controversial novel", appeared in press in the year following the broadcast of the [[NBC]] miniseries ''[[Holocaust (miniseries)|Holocaust]]'' (1978), engendering a period in American culture where "a newly-raised consciousness of the Holocaust was becoming a forefront public issue."<ref name=Mathe04/> Mathé says:
{{blockquote|sign=|source=|Styron's ideological and narrative choices in his framing of a novel touching upon the "limit events" of Auschwitz, considered by many to lie beyond the realm of the imagination… spurred a polemic… which, twenty-five years later, is far from having died down.<ref name=Mathe04/>}}
(By "limit event" the author is referring to the nature of, and magnitude and violence of acts in, the Holocaust, characteristics of that "event" that challenged the civilizing tendencies of and the foundations of legitimacy for the moral and political fabric that defined its affected communities.<ref name = LimitEventNote>Here, paraphrasing Simone Gigliotti, see following. The reference to a "limit event" (synonymous with "limit case" and "limit situation") is to a concept deriving at least from the early 1990s—Saul Friedländer, in introducing his ''Probing the Limits of Representation,'' quotes David Carroll, who refers to the Holocaust as "this limit case of knowledge and feeling". It is a concept that can be understood to mean an event or related circumstance or practice that is "of such magnitude and profound violence" that it "rupture[s]... otherwise normative foundations of legitimacy and... civilising tendencies that underlie... political and moral community" (the later, oft-cited formulation of Simone Gigliotti). 
* For Friedländer, see {{cite book |last1=Friedländer |first1=Saul |author-link1=Saul Friedländer |year=1992 |chapter=Introduction |editor1-last=Friedländer |editor1-first=Saul |title=Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "final Solution" |url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0674707664 |location=Cambridge, MA, USA |publisher=Harvard University Press |pages=1–21 (esp. 6) |isbn=0-674-70766-4 |access-date=7 November 2015}} 
* For Carroll, see {{cite book |contributor-last= Carroll |contributor-first=David |date=1990 |contribution=The Memory of Devastation and the Responsibilities of Thought: 'And let's not talk about that' [Foreword] |last=Lyotard |first=Jean François |author-link=Jean François Lyotard |title= Heidegger and "the Jews" |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9Nd1XHpMtQUC |language=en |translator1=Andreas Michel |translator2=Mark S. Roberts |pages=vii-xxix |isbn=0-8166-1857-7 |location=Minneapolis, MN |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |quote=Quote: [T]his indeterminacy has special significance when it comes to the Shoah, this limit case of knowledge and feeling, in terms of which all such systems of belief and thought, all forms of literary and artistic expression, seem irrelevant or criminal.}} 
* For Gigliotti, see {{cite journal |author=Gigliotti, Simone |date=June 2003 |title=Unspeakable Pasts as Limit Events: The Holocaust, Genocide, and the Stolen Generations |journal=Australian Journal of Politics and History |volume=49 |number=2 |pages=164–181, esp. 164 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |doi=10.1111/1467-8497.00302 |quote=Quote: A 'limit event' is an event or practice of such magnitude and profound violence that its effects rupture the otherwise normative foundations of legitimacy and so-called civilising tendencies that underlie the constitution of political and moral community.}}</ref>)

The controversy to which Mathé is specifically referring arises from a thematic analysis which—in apparent strong consensus (e.g., see Rosenfeld's 1979 work, "The Holocaust According to William Styron"<ref name=Rosenfeld79/>)—has Styron, through the novel, his interviews, and essays:
* Acknowledging Jewish suffering during [[the Holocaust]], while attempting to reorient public perception away from [[Nazi war crimes]] and [[genocide]]s being solely aimed against the Jews and towards also acknowledging the experiences of Slavs, anti-Nazi Christians, political [[dissident]]s, and the disabled (hence Sophie's ethnicity and Catholic upbringing); that is, it has him insisting on seeing Auschwitz in particular in more universal terms as "a murderous thrust against 'the entire human family.'"<ref name=Mathe04/><ref name=Rosenfeld79/> Styron further extends his argument, again with controversy:
* Proposing that this more general view of the barbarism of Auschwitz (and in particular the fact that Slavic peoples and Christians were also caught up in its program of forced labour and extermination) disproves the unsupported/irrational/bigoted idea of universal Christian [[collective guilt]] and challenges historical arguments blaming all previous Christian anti-Semitism as the real cause of the Holocaust, and 
* Suggesting that concentration camps, in using slave labour, justifies the comparison of Nazi war crimes (e.g., in the writings of Rubenstein) with the [[Slavery in the United States|American institution of slavery]] and allowed the latter to be viewed as the less inhumane institution of the two.<ref name=Mathe04/><ref name=Rosenfeld79/>

Speaking of Styron's views as set forth in the novel and his nonfiction work, Rosenfeld refers to them as "revisionist views" that "culminate in ''Sophie's Choice''" with an aim to "take the Holocaust out of Jewish and Christian history and place it within a generalized history of evil",<ref name=Rosenfeld79/>{{rp|44}} and it is this specific revisionist thrust that is the substance of the novel's initial and persisting ability to engender controversy.<ref name=Mathe04/>

====Other aspects of global controversy====
''Sophie's Choice'' was banned by the [[Goskomizdat]] agency as part of [[censorship in the Soviet Union]], and was [[Censorship in Communist Poland|likewise banned by the censors]] in the Communist [[People's Republic of Poland]] for "its unflinching portrait of Polish anti-Semitism" in the interwar [[Second Polish Republic]] and in the postwar [[Soviet Bloc]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Sirlin, Rhoda |author2=West, James L. W. III | date = 2007 | title = Sophie's Choice: A Contemporary Casebook | location = Newcastle UK | publisher = Cambridge Scholars Publishing  | page = ix | url = http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/60485 | access-date = 5 Jan 2013 | quote = }}</ref>

''Sophie's Choice'' was [[censorship in South Africa|banned by censors]] working for the government of [[South Africa under apartheid]] in November 1979, for being a sexually explicit work.<ref>Index on censorship, Vol 9, no 2.{{clarify|date = May 2023}}{{full citation needed|date = May 2023}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date = May 2023}} It has also been banned in some high schools in the United States. For instance, the book was pulled from the [[La Mirada High School]] Library in California by the Norwalk-La Mirada High School District in 2002 because of a parent's complaint about its sexual content.<ref name="LAT">{{cite news | last = Helmand | first = Duke |title = Students Fight for 'Sophie's Choice' | newspaper = [[The Los Angeles Times]] |date = 2001-12-22 | url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-dec-22-me-17211-story.html | access-date = February 25, 2016}}</ref> However, a year after students had protested and the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU) had sent a letter to the school district requesting that the district reverse its actions, students were again given access to the book in the school library.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aclu-wa.org/library_files/A%20History%20of%20Fighting%20Censorship.pdf|title=A History of Fighting Censorship|publisher=[[American Civil Liberties Union]]|year=2006|access-date=2009-10-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101223201015/http://www.aclu-wa.org/library_files/A%20History%20of%20Fighting%20Censorship.pdf|archive-date=2010-12-23}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://sshl.ucsd.edu/banned/books.html|title=Banned Books Week: September 25-October 2|date=September 22, 2004|publisher=[[UCSD]]|access-date=2009-10-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511235655/http://sshl.ucsd.edu/banned/books.html|archive-date=May 11, 2008}}</ref>

==Adaptations==
===Film===
{{Main|Sophie's Choice (film)}}
The novel was made into a film of the same name in the United States, in 1982. Written and directed by [[Alan J. Pakula]], the film was nominated for [[Academy Award]]s for its screenplay, musical score, [[cinematography]], and costume design, and [[Meryl Streep]] received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance of the title role.<ref>{{cite web |title=The 55th Academy Awards {{!}} 1983 |url=https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1983 |website=www.oscars.org |access-date=23 April 2024 |language=en |date=5 October 2014}}</ref>

===Opera===
{{Main|Sophie's Choice (opera)}}
The British composer [[Nicholas Maw]] wrote an opera based on the novel, which was premiered at the [[Royal Opera House]] in London in 2002, and has also been performed in Washington, Berlin and Vienna.<ref>Ballantine, Christopher (2010), [http://opera.archive.netcopy.co.uk/article/june-2010/94/sophies-choice-maw "Sophie's Choice, Maw"], in ''[[Opera (British magazine)|Opera]]'', June 2010, p. 94. Website version accessed 25 April 2015; Gurewitsch, Matthew (2010). [http://www.beyondcriticism.com/7832/maw-sophies-choice "Maw: Sophie's Choice"], ''[[Opera News]]'', August 2010, on [http://www.beyondcriticism.com/ ''beyondcriticism''] website, accessed 25 April 2015</ref>

==Publication history and related works==
===Selected publication history===
* Styron, William (1979) [https://books.google.com/books?id=6etWd4COcyYC ''Sophie's Choice''], New York, NY: Random House, {{ISBN|0-394-46109-6}} and {{ISBN|978-0-394-46109-0}}. Accessed 2 May 2023.
* —. (1998) [1979] [https://books.google.com/books?id=pvYOAQAAMAAJ ''Sophie's Choice''] (Modern Library 100 Best Novels Series; reprint, revised), New York, NY: Modern Library, {{ISBN|0-679-60289-5}}. Accessed 2 May 2023.
* —. (2004) [1979] [https://books.google.com/books?id=Xg9h6Q7BrgEC ''Sophie's Choice''] (Vintage Classics; reprint), London, England: Vintage, {{ISBN|0-09-947044-6}} and {{ISBN|978-0-09-947044-1}}. Accessed 2 May 2023.
* —. (2010) [1979] [https://books.google.com/books?id=-YhTDbmcf4UC ''Sophie's Choice''] (authorized e-book), New York, NY: Open Road Media, {{ISBN|1-936317-17-6}} and {{ISBN|978-1-936317-17-2}}. Accessed 2 May 2023.

===Styron's related works===
The following of Styron's works have been collected, per Sylvie Mathé, as relevant to the author's philosophical framework with regard to his constructing the history and characters within his novel.<ref name=Mathe04>{{cite journal | last1=Mathé | first1=Sylvie | year = 2004 | title=The "grey zone" in William Styron's Sophie's Choice | url=http://www.cairn.info/zen.php?ID_ARTICLE=ETAN_574_0453#no2 | volume=57 |issue=4 | journal = Études anglaises | page=453 | doi=10.3917/etan.574.0453 | access-date=4 November 2015}}</ref>
* Styron, William (1974) "Auschwitz," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' 1993 [1982], pp.&nbsp;336–339, New York, NY: Vintage.
:* —. (1978) "Hell Reconsidered," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' 1993 [1982], pp.&nbsp;105–115, New York, NY: Vintage.
* —. (1997) "A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle: The Making of Sophie's Choice," ''The Sewanee Review'' (Summer), Vol. 105, No. 3, pp.&nbsp;395–400.
* —. (1999) ''Afterword to Sophie's Choice,'' pp.&nbsp;601–606, New York, NY: Modern Library.

==See also==
{{portal|Novels}}
* [[The Holocaust in popular culture]]
* [[Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century|''Le Monde''{{'s}} 100 Books of the Century]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group = note}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
The following appear in ascending order, by original publication date, and within the same year, alphabetical by author:
* Arendt, Hannah (1994) [1963] ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,'' New York, NY, USA: Penguin. 
<!--* Styron, William (1967) ''The Confessions of Nat Turner,'' New York, NY, USA: Random House.{{why?|date=May 2016}} PLEASE INDICATE WHY THIS US RELEVANT TO THE ARTICLE, if returning to view.-->
* Styron, William (2001) [1978] "Introduction," in ''The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future'' [1975] (Rubenstein, Richard L., ed.), New York, NY, USA: Perennial.{{page needed|date=November 2015}} 
* Rubenstein, Richard L. (2001) [1975] ''The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future,'' New York, NY, USA: Perennial.
* Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (1979) "The Holocaust According to William Styron," ''Midstream,'' Vol. 25, No. 10 (December), pp.&nbsp;43–49.
* Morris, Robert K. & Irving Malin, eds. (1981) ''The Achievement of William Styron,'' Athens, GA, USA: University of Georgia Press.
:* Pearce, Richard (1981) "Sophie's Choices," pp.&nbsp;284–297, in ''The Achievement of William Styron'' (Morris, Robert K. & Malin, Irving, eds.), Athens, GA, USA: University of Georgia Press.
* Krzyzanowski, Jerzy R. (1983) "What's Wrong with Sophie's Choice?," ''Polish American Studies,'' No. 1 (Spring), p.&nbsp;72, see [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20148119 What's Wrong with Sophie's Choice?], accessed 7 November 2015.
* West, James L.W., III, ed. (1985) ''Conversations with William Styron,'' Jackson, MS, USA: University of Mississippi Press.
* Sirlin, Rhoda A. (1990) ''William Styron's Sophie's Choice: Crime and Self-Punishment,'' Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Research Press.
:* Styron, William (1990) "Introduction," in ''William Styron's Sophie's Choice: Crime and Self-Punishment'' (Sirloin, Rhoda A., ed.) Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Research Press.{{page needed|date=November 2015}}
* Friedman, Saul S., ed. (1993) ''Holocaust Literature: A Handbook of Critical, Historical and Literary Writings,'' Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Press.
* White, Terry (1994) "Allegorical Evil, Existentialist Choice in O'Connor, Oates, and Styron," ''The Midwest Quarterly,'' Vol. 35, No. 3 (Spring), pp.&nbsp;383–397.
* Cologne-Brookes, Gavin (1995) ''The Novels of William Styron: From Harmony to History,'' Baton Rouge, LA, USA: Louisiana State University Press.
* Bloom, Harold, ed. (2002) [https://books.google.com/books?id=aQZ9QgAACAAJ ''William Styron's Sophie's Choice''] (''Modern critical interpretations'' series), Philadelphia, PA, USA: Chelsea House, {{ISBN|978-0-7910-6340-8}}, see [], accessed 7 November 2015. 
:* Law, Richard G. (2002) "The Reach of Fiction: Narrative Technique in Styron's Sophie's Choice," pp.&nbsp;133–150, in [https://books.google.com/books?id=aQZ9QgAACAAJ ''William Styron's Sophie's Choice,''] (Bloom, Harold, ed.; ''Modern critical interpretations'' series), Philadelphia, PA, USA: Chelsea House, {{ISBN|978-0-7910-6340-8}}. Accessed 7 November 2015. 
:* Telpaz, Gideon (2002) "An Interview with William Styron," pp.&nbsp;231–241, in [https://books.google.com/books?id=aQZ9QgAACAAJ ''William Styron's Sophie's Choice,''] (Bloom, Harold, ed.; ''Modern critical interpretations'' series), Philadelphia, PA, USA: Chelsea House, {{ISBN|978-0-7910-6340-8}}. Accessed 7 November 2015. 
* Oster, Sharon (2003) "The 'Erotics of Auschwitz': Coming of Age in The Painted Bird and Sophie's Choice," pp.&nbsp;90–124, in ''Witnessing the Disaster: Essays on Representation and the Holocaust,'' (Bernard-Donals, Michael  & Glejzer, Richard, eds.), Madison, WI, USA: University of Wisconsin Press.
* Beranek, Stephanie (2015) [2003] [https://web.archive.org/web/20160709011424/https://www.lsj.org/web/literature/styron.php "William Styron: Sophie's Choice,"] at ''London School of Journalism,'' June 2003. Accessed 2 May 2023.
* Cologne-Brookes, Gavin (2014) ''Rereading William Styron,'' Baton Rouge, LA, USA: Louisiana State University Press.

==External links==
* {{cite book | author = Busch, Jessica | editor = Unsworth, John | date = 2014 | chapter = Sophie's Choice | title = 20th-Century American Bestsellers [database] | format = student coursework database entry | url = http://unsworth.unet.brandeis.edu/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=Sophie%27s+Choice | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160510222714/http://unsworth.unet.brandeis.edu/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=Sophie's+Choice | archive-date = 2016-05-10 | location = Waltham, MA | publisher = Brandeis University | access-date = 23 May 2016 }} [Student mini-essays based on stated sources, highlighting such matters as the contemporaneous controversy associated with the novel, including critiques of the author, serving therefore as a point to other sources germane to this article.]

{{NBA for Fiction 1975–1999}}

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