Although Sophie's Choice by William Styron won the American Book Award for fiction, it met with some very mixed reviews. Some critics regarded the novel as bombastic and melodramatic-in short, a colossal failure. In William Styron's "Sophie's Choice," Rhoda Sirlin demonstrates that Sophie's Choice is Styron's most audacious, original, and artistically successful novel to date. First, this book will counter the many critics who have assailed the novel as anti-Semitic. Sirlin then counters the argument that Sophie's Choice is a sexist novel and that Styron and his youthful alter ego, Stingo,...