He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty-even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his-or any other-generation.

'That special polish, that brilliance Updike is among the best' 'It is sexy, in bad taste, violent and basically cynical. If you enjoyed Rabbit, Run, you might like Don DeLillo's Americana, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. His most famous works are the Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom series, all of which are published in Penguin Modern Classics: R abbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990). Updike was the author of twenty-one novels as well as numerous collections of short stories, poems and criticism, and is one of only three authors to win more than one Pulitzer Prize. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at The New Yorker. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. John Updike (1932-2009) was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Because, as he knows only too well, 'after you've been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate'. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. It's 1959 and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. The first book in his award-winning 'Rabbit' series, John Updike's Rabbit, Run contains an afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.

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