"This, presumably, is what Horace meant when he asked, rhetorically, "do good poems come by nature, or by art?" The same question might be asked of good novels, such as this one. One suspects that Sontag wants us to ask such a question, wants us to use the dilemma of theater's mimesis as a way of reflecting on the dilemma of the historical novel's relation to reality. For her book is both Romantically expressive and artfully sly; it is unconscious and self-conscious in equal measure." James Woods, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review here)

"Often brave and beautiful . . . The scope of the take is vast, and there is a largesse in the telling, the sheer happiness of art. But In America is also an intimate portrait of a willful woman who, like the liner which brings her to America, trails a great wake behind her . . . In this novel about Poland and America, acting and living, transformation and respiration, Susan Sontag has indeed found a story that tells many stories with elan, intelligence and delight."Richard Lourie, Washington Post Book World

"Sure-footed and wonderfully daring."Sarah Kerr, New York Times Book Review

"An inventive work, written in fluid prose . . . Beautiful and unsettling."Lisa Michaels, The Wall Street Journal

"A fascinating exploration of what's real in a culture that preaches authenticity but worships artificiality."Christian Science Monitor

"Enough incident, psychology, local color, and fascinating detail to stock a flotilla of popular novels, a couple of Ragtimes, and a brace of theatrical memoirs."Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"What is wonderful about this book is . . . [the] counterpoint of novelist and essayist, of innocence and knowingness. From the knowingness comes another excellence of In America, its cat's cradle of meanings."Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

"In America displays Sontag in a relaxed, pleasure-seeking mode, guiding her character through a long travelogue in time, specifically the beginnings of the gilded age in the brave new world. Here are sumptuous theaters in Manhattan and hotels in San Francisco; a journey 1,900 feet down into a silver mine in Virginia City, Nevada; cameo appearances by such luminaries as Henry James and the Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth."Paul Gray, Time

"Like its brilliant essayist author, this 'novel' defies every convention of storytelling . . . Most original and innovative."Philadelphia Inquirer

"An exhilarating journey into the past, freighted with dazzling detail, the product of an endlessly inquisitive, historical imagination."The Economist

"Sontag weaves an expansive broad narrative cloth here, keeping us under her spell until the very last word."Chicago Tribune

"A powerful story of a woman transcending herself . . . Mesmerizing."Palo Alto Daily News

"[In America] showcases Sontag's gift for cultural commentary and her eye for sumptuous detail."Denver Rocky Mountain News

"Susan Sontag is a powerful thinker, and a better writer, sentence for sentence, than anyone who now wears the tag 'intellectual.'"New York Observer

"Sontag crafts a novel of ideas in which real figures from the past enact their lives against an assiduously researched, almost cinematically vivid background." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Alternately hilarious and tragic."Vanity Fair

"Sontag uses dense, elegant language, inventive dialogue, impassioned monologue, and diary entries to lure the reader more deeply into the fascinating historical journey of a powerful actress . . . Sontag triumphs once again with her gift for turning history into riveting fiction."Library Journal

In 1876, a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalezowska, Poland's greatest actress, travels to California to found a "utopian" commune. "In America" is a big, juicy, surprising book about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the fate of idealism, and about the world of the theater.

Susan Sontag is the author of four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover and In America; I, Etcetera, a collection of stories; several plays; and five works of nonfiction, among them Illness as a Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. She lives in New York City. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.