The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)
By Carson McCullers

Several stories and a major novella published by Carson ten years after her major masterpiece. It contains several stories, including: a grotesque human triangle in a primitive Southern town; a young boy learning the difficult lessons of manhood; an experience in a fateful encounter with his native land and former love. These are parts of the world of Carson McCullers—a world of the lost, the injured, the eternal strangers at life's feast. Here are brilliant revelations of love and longing, bitter heartbreak and occasional happiness—tales that probe the very heart of human existence. Here is the artistry, compassion and pitiless insight of one of the truly great writers of our time.