8vo. Original red cloth; dust jacket (light rubbing); folding case.

FIRST EDITION. The Day of the Locust was written while Nathanael West was in Hollywood working as a screenwriter, with many of the settings and incidents taken directly from things he saw while living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. The Day of the Locust was a critical success, but a poor seller; only in the mid-1950s, following a critical reappraisal of West's career, did the book gain its literary reputation. It has since been listed as one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and was adapted into a 1975 major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Karen Black.