Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Make the switch
Gift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThe American
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreDuring a trip to Europe, wealthy American businessman Christopher Newman proposes marriage to the scintillating and beautiful aristocrat Claire de Cintri. To his dismay, he comes up against the machinations of her impoverished but proud family, who find Newman to be a vulgar example of the American privileged class. Brilliantly combining elements of comedy, tragedy, romance, and melodrama, this tale of thwarted desire vividly contrasts nineteenth-century American and European manners.
Henry James (1843–1916), American novelist, short-story writer, and man of letters, was born in Washington Place, New York, to a family of distinguished philosophers and theologians. He attended schools in New York, Boston, and throughout Europe, where he later settled. A major figure in the history of the novel, he is celebrated as a master craftsman who brought his great art and impeccable technique to bear in the development of abiding moral themes.
Reviews
“A masterpiece of American romanticism in which James shows us his profound grasp of what he was ultimately to call ‘the Americo-European legend.’”
“The fine touch with which James explores the complexities of [the] scenario marks an extraordinary advance.”
“The whole world was a rough place, as James would prove in fiction after fiction, brimming with pain and violence and darkness…One may see in The American his first great effort to take and give readers, in the largest sense of the words, the rough with the smooth.”
Expand reviews