Set this House on Fire

More about the book

A socially engaged novel by an American author captures, through a complex composition that intertwines narratives and alternates between the present and flashbacks, the dramatic confrontation of two Americans in an Italian town. A free-spirited painter, fleeing the uniformity of the American high standard of living, Southern caste systems, and American class injustice, encounters an American millionaire who assumes the role of a modern Mephistopheles. In a story ignited by human passions that culminates in violence and murder, William Styron expresses a protest against the degradation of humanity.