Steps

This National Book Award–winning novel of power, libido, and morality is “a powerful and profoundly disturbing book” (The New York Times).   First published in 1968, Jerzy Kosinski’s classic vision of moral and sexual estrangement captured the deviant undercurrents of the era’s politics and culture. In this haunting novel, distinctions are eroded between oppressor and oppressed, perpetrator and victim, narcissism and anonymity. Kosinski portrays men and women both aroused and desensitized by an environment that disdains the individual and seeks control over the imagination.   “Céline and Kafka stand behind this accomplished art” from the celebrated author of The Painted Bird and Being There (The New York Times Book Review).   “A collection of unbelievably creepy little allegorical tableaux done in a terse elegant voice that’s like nothing else anywhere ever.” —David Foster Wallace   “Kosinski’s prose is perfect to his purpose, efficient, detached, lucid as a gem, wholly in command.” —The New York Times   “By some miracle of training, which recalls the linguistic bravado of Conrad and Nabokov, he is already a master of pungent and disciplined English prose. Simply as a stylist, Kosinski has few equals among American novelists born to the language. And I have also become convinced, after reading Steps, that he is one of the most gifted new figures to appear in our literature for some years.” —Irving Howe, Harper’s   “A beautifully written book. It is precise, scrupulous, and poetic. I can think of few writers who are able to so persuasively describe an event, set a scene, communicate an emotion.” —Geoffrey Wolff, New Leader