Babbitt

Lewis Sinclair (1885–1951) was an American writer who reflected social problems in his work and the contradictions between the individual and society. Sinclair was the first recipient in the United States of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1930), awarded to him specifically for the novel “Babbitt.” After the “Great Depression” in the USA, ordinary people were mainly focused on increasing their personal well-being. The pursuit of the notorious “American Dream” went hand in hand with a fear of communism. That was when the so-called “consumer society” began to take shape—one that placed bourgeois ideals at the center and blindly followed them. The hero’s name became a common noun for all supporters of these life values. We present an audio version of the novel “Babbitt,” a vivid example of critical realism in literature.