The Benefactor

‘A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centred, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life’

New York Post

Hippolyte is a wealthy bohemian with a surprising, violently imaginative dream life. Taking the form of a memoir, The Benefactor is the story of his psychic grand tour through increasingly strange mental landscapes. As Hippolyte tries to make his daily existence conform to his bizarre dreamworld, and reality and fantasy become more and more indistinguishable, will he be able to find peace? Funny, acrobatic, disturbing and profound, Susan Sontag’s first book, published in 1963, is a wry pastiche of the nineteenth-century novel and a bold commentary on identity and the imagination.

‘Originality, economy of language, brilliance … There is a Kafka-esque quality to The Benefactor’

Newsday

‘A major writer … she can make a real story out of dreams and thoughts’

Hannah Arendt