It Can't Happen Here
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“The novel that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s authoritarian appeal.”—Salon
It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’s later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.
Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.
Called “a message to thinking Americans” by the Springfield Republican when it was published in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today’s news.
Includes an Introduction by Michael Meyer
and an Afterword by Gary Scharnhorst
Sinclair Lewis
Nobel Prize-winning writer Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) is best known for novels like Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith (for which he was awarded but declined the Pulitzer Prize), and Elmer Gantry. A writer from his youth, Lewis wrote for and edited the Yale Literary Magazine while a student, and started his literary career writing popular stories for magazines and selling plots to other writers like Jack London. Lewis’s talent for description and creating unique characters won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, making him the first American writer to win the prestigious award. Considered to be one of the “greats” of American literature, Lewis was honoured with a Great Americans series postage stamp, and his work has been adapted for both stage and screen.
More by Sinclair Lewis
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