This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it.

Introduction

Call It Sleep is a 1934 novel by Henry Roth. Time magazine described it as "The story of three years in the life of a sensitive Jewish slum-child, told with painstaking and pain-giving fidelity," in the February 25, 1935 edition. While the book sold poorly upon its initial publication, the book received a second life when it was reviewed by literary critic Irving Howe on the front page of The New York Times Book Review on October 25, 1964, and has since sold over a million copies. Recently, Time listed it as one of the 100 best English novels from 1923 to 2005.^[1]