The Grass Harp / A Tree of Night and Other Short Stories

by Truman Capote

Overview

Set on the outskirts of a small Southern town, The Grass Harp tells the story of three endearing misfits—an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies—who one day take up residence in a tree house. As they pass sweet yet hazardous hours in a china tree, The Grass Harp manages to convey all the pleasures and responsibilities of freedom. But most of all it teaches us about the sacredness of love, “that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.”

This volume also includes Capote’s A Tree of Night and Other Stories, which the Washington Post called “unobtrusively beautiful . . . a superlative book.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679745570
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/28/1993
Series:	Vintage International Series
Edition description:	First Vintage International Edition
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	121,167
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Truman Capote was a native of New Orleans, where he was born on September 30, 1924. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was an international literary success when first published in 1948, and accorded the author a prominent place among the writers of America's postwar generation. He sustained this position subsequently with short-story collections (A Tree of Night, among others), novels and novellas (The Grass Harp and Breakfast at Tiffany's), some of the best travel writing of our time (Local Color), profiles and reportage that appeared originally in The New Yorker (The Duke in His Domain and The Muses Are Heard), a true-crime masterpiece (In Cold Blood), several short memiors about his childhood in the South (A Christmas Memory, The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas), two plays (The Grass Harp and House of Flowers and two films (Beat the devil and The Innocents).

Mr. Capote twice won the O.Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in August 1984, shortly before his sixtieth birthday.

Date of Birth:

September 30, 1924

Date of Death:

August 25, 1984

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, Louisiana

Place of Death:

Los Angeles, California

Education:

Trinity School and St. John's Academy in New York City and Greenwich High School in Connecticut

Editorial Reviews

 “Remarkable. . . . Infused with a tender laughter, charming human warmth, [and] a feeling for the positive quality of life.” —New York Herald Tribune

“The Grass Harp charms you into sharing the author’s feeling that there is a special poetry—a spontaneity and wonder and delight—in lives untarnished by conformity and common sense.” —The Atlantic

From the Publisher