You Can't Go Home Again

Published after Wolfe's death and edited from his manuscripts, this novel follows the writer George Webber. After his first book is published, it upsets his home town, which sees itself in its pages, and he finds he cannot return to the place and people he knew. He moves through New York, where he meets wealth and ambition, and then to Europe, particularly Germany, where he sees the early shadow of dark political change. The book is about fame, friendship, disillusion and the changing character of America in the Depression years. Its title became a well-known phrase for the way that the past cannot be recovered.