Skip to content
Your Trusted NYC Bookstore for More Than 40 Years ∙ Now Offering Art Supplies!
Your Trusted NYC Bookstore for More Than 40 Years ∙ Now Offering Art Supplies!

Nightwood

ISBN 9780811216715

Original price $13.45 - Original price $13.45
Original price
$13.45
$13.45 - $13.45
Current price $13.45

The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece―one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna―a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction―there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another persona woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.

Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

Return & Refund

Books: Return within 7 days for store credit, excluding shipping costs.

Non-Book Items:

  • In-Person Purchases: Store credit or exchange within 14 days.
  • Online Purchases: Full refund within 14 days (shipping excluded).

Exceptions: Textbooks, course packs, and lab manuals are final sale unless a class is dropped within the first 4 weeks from the start of the term with proof of dropping the class.

All Returns: Items must be in original condition with tags/packaging. A receipt is required for in-person refunds.

Read our full Return and Refund Policy.

Shipping & Pickup
  • Most in-stock items are processed and shipped through USPS within 72 hours (excluding weekends and holidays) after receiving your order confirmation email. You will receive another notification when your order has shipped.
  • Shipping charges and estimated delivery times will be calculated and displayed at checkout based on the weight of your order and the destination.
  • Pickup from 939 Lexington Avenue is available for most in-stock items.
  • Read our full Shipping Policy.