8vo. Original black cloth, gilt-lettered spine; dust jacket (toning, minor chipping along extremities).

FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE in the first issue dust jacket with "Recent Fiction" on rear panel and errata slip tipped in before the dedication page. Appointment in Samarra was a massive success upon publication, with an enthusiastic Ernest Hemingway writing of it, "If you want to read a book by a man who knows what he is writing about and has written it marvelously well, read Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara." The author would later credit a retelling of an ancient Mesopotamian tale by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1933 play Sheppey with providing the inspiration for the title, writing that "Dorothy [Parker] didn't like the title; [publisher] Alfred Harcourt didn't like the title; his editors didn't like it; nobody liked it but me." In 2011 it was placed in Time Magazine's List of the 100 Best Novels published since the magazine's founding in 1923. Bruccoli A2.1.