Overview

A fortieth-anniversary edition of the unforgettable, eccentric 'truly original novel' (Newsday), an evocative tale of race, romance, and the complexities of the human experience, by the Pulitzer Prize finalist. She's Ilka Weissnix, a young Jewish refugee from Hitler's Europe, newly arrived in the United States. He's Carter Bayoux, her first American: a middle-aged, hard-drinking Black intellectual. At first, their relationship is fuelled by lust, but also by a shared sense of displacement, with Ilka having fled her homeland and Carter struggling to find his place in a society steeped in racism and prejudice. In an effort to assimilate and discover 'the real America', Ilka hurls herself into Carter's chaotic world, helping him navigate depression, alcoholism, and the ghosts of his past and present. Will Ilka sacrifice her own needs and future for Carter's, or can she save him from the demons and traumas that are tearing him, and them, apart? First published forty years ago to universal acclaim, called 'wonderful' by People magazine, and 'quiet, funny, slyly affecting' in a starred Kirkus review, and now featuring a new introduction by acclaimed novelist Jeffery Renard Allen, Her First American cements its place among the great American novels and introduces a new generation of readers to the brilliant Lore Segal.

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Reviews

“[A] highly original mixture of drollery and catastrophe. . . . Her First American sneaks up on you. What begins as the comic adventures of a greenhorn ends up distilling the ironies and poignancies of Jewish-Black relations in America.” —The New York Times Book Review “A wonderful novel . . . Her First American is boldly comic and full of startling scenes—to read it is to be exhilarated. It’s also the kind of incredibly rich book that can make a reader pause and examine his beliefs about racism, religion, the Three Stooges, and most of all—America the amazing.” —People “Charm, warmth, humor, and a completely unsentimental compassion are exactly what Segal provides in this bittersweet, idiosyncratic love story. . . . A truly original novel.” —Newsday “A quiet, funny, slyly affecting novel—one that always remains under delicate control while seeming to teeter on the edge of preciousness or sentimentality.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Author Information

Lore Segal (1928-2024), author of Other People's Housesand Shakespeare's Kitchen, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (all published by The New Press), among other works, was the recipient of a New Yorker Best Book of the Year Award, an O. Henry Prize, the Clifton Fadiman Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and other publications.

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