An American Tragedy

Theodore Dreiser’s novel “An American Tragedy,” written in response to several murders that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was published in November 1925. Clyde Griffiths is a young man from a poor, fanatical family of missionaries who tries to arrange his life in the best possible way by following the American dream. He is vain, ambitious, passionately wants to reach a beautiful and wealthy life—the heights of social and material well-being. He is ready to remove any obstacle in his way to wealth, luxury, and a happy marriage at any cost. In 1928, the novel was published in Russian as the seventh volume of T. Dreiser’s collected works by the “Zemlya i Fabrika” publishing house. This translation by Zinaida Vershinina is what we offer you.