Babbitt

A sharp, enduring satire of American middle-class life, this novel follows George F. Babbitt, a prosperous real estate agent in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. Outwardly successful and devoted to business, boosterism, and social clubs, Babbitt begins to experience a quiet dissatisfaction with the conformity and materialism that shape his world. As he tentatively rebels against social expectations, he discovers the limits of independence in a culture that prizes respectability above all. Written by Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, this work remains a keenly observed portrait of ambition, consumerism, and the pressures of belonging—both a time capsule of the 1920s and a surprisingly modern reflection on social identity.