"A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly."-Zadie Smith
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years-due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist-Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years-due largely to initial audiences' rejection of its strong black female protagonist-Hurston's classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
"[A] brilliant novel about a woman's search for her authentic self and for real love." - Edwidge Danticat
"Their Eyes Were Watching God belongs in the same category with [the works of] William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, that of enduring American literature." - Saturday Review
"This is a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly. Hurston is a lyrical writer, and lyricism is not usually my cup of tea, but there are talents that go beyond genre and taste. Her greatest claim over me is that she never was ashamed of the novel as a form-she believed in the transformative power of storytelling, and she took risks with sentiment that few contemporary writers are prepared to make." - America Magazine
"This is a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly. Hurston...believed in the transformative power of storytelling, and she took risks with sentiment that few contemporary writers are prepared to make." - Zadie Smith, bestselling author of White Teeth and On Beauty
"Undoubtedly one of the important American novels." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Their Eyes Were Watching God belongs in the same category with [the works of] William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, that of enduring American literature." - Saturday Review
"This is a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly. Hurston is a lyrical writer, and lyricism is not usually my cup of tea, but there are talents that go beyond genre and taste. Her greatest claim over me is that she never was ashamed of the novel as a form-she believed in the transformative power of storytelling, and she took risks with sentiment that few contemporary writers are prepared to make." - America Magazine
"This is a deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly. Hurston...believed in the transformative power of storytelling, and she took risks with sentiment that few contemporary writers are prepared to make." - Zadie Smith, bestselling author of White Teeth and On Beauty
"Undoubtedly one of the important American novels." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)







