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her first american

by lore segal

It's the early 1950s. Ilka Weissnix, a newly arrived Jewish-Austrian refugee, boards a train from New York hoping to find a 'real American'. In a railroad bar she meets Carter Bayoux, an urbane Black American intellectual. Although twice her age and in the grip of alcoholism, his compassionate worldliness enthrals her. She finds - 'with his first, slightest touch, under her elbow' - that she has fallen in love.

Lore Segal described Her First American as 'her favourite child', a reckoning and rendering with her own experiences in the 1950s. Her nuanced portrait of the charismatic Carter Bayoux, the glimpses he offers of New York's Black cultural life and the struggles of addiction, are drawn with vibrancy, wit and truth. Segal illuminates from an outsider's perspective both the deep wounds of racism and a bright moment of Black American and Jewish solidarity.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN 

Jeffery Renard Allen is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the celebrated novel Song of the Shank (2014) and the short story collection Fat Time (2023). He was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Reviews

‘Brilliantly acute’ – The New Yorker

‘Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel’ – New York Times

‘A novel of unmatched vibrancy…Carter Bayoux is one of the great creations of American literature’ – Vivian Gornick

‘This book will continue to delight readers for as long as people read fiction’ – John Mitchinson, Backlisted podcast

‘A stunning achievement because Segal is willing to sound the depths and dangers of existence and show us what is true about ourselves and the world’ – Jeffery Reynard Allen

‘A singular voice, at once wry, witty and morally engaged’ – The Paris Review