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Sabbatical: A RomanceAuthor: John Barth American Literature Series June 1996 366 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 paperback, 1-56478-096-1 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $10.36—20% OFF! 
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Book Description
Subtitled "a romance," Sabbatical is the story of Susan Rachel Allan Seckler, a sharp young associate professor of early American literature—part Jewish, part Gypsy, and possibly descended from Edgar Allan Poe—and her husband Fenwick Scott Key Turner, a 50-year-old ex-CIA officer currently between careers, a direct descendant of the author of "The Star Spangled Banner" and himself the author of a troublemaking book about his former employer. Seven years into their marriage, they decide to take a sabbatical, a sailboat journey on which they sum up their years together and try to make important decisions about the years ahead.
True to its subtitle, the novel combines the mysterious and marvelous (unexplained disappearances, a fabled sea monster in Chesapeake Bay) with romantic love and daring adventure.
Sabbatical is quintessential Barth: it involves sailing, twinship, the joy of love and literature, the sorrow of death and disaster, and a playfully complex narrative. The author has written a foreword for this new edition.
About the Author
| John Barth is the author of numerous works of fiction, including The Sot-Weed Factor, Lost in the Funhouse, and the National Book Award winner Chimera. He taught for many years in the writing program at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Chestertown, Maryland. |  |
Praise
"The best writer of fiction in America."—New York Times"Barth, almost alone among his fellows, will have none of the bloodless abstractions. Among his many styles, what is most distinctive is his toughness, the quick march of his verbs, his reliance on muscular Anglo-Saxon locutions, his puns."—Washington Post
"Barth has proved again and again that he can equal the traditionalists at their own game, and thus he has won the right to be different."—Saturday Review