After losing his job with a major publishing house, he decides to live off his savings while writing his first novel. Twenty-two-year-old Stingo is a Southern transplant trying to make his way in New York in 1947. From Stingo’s perspective 20 years after the events in the novel, the book explores the themes of the dehumanizing effects of the Holocaust, the persistence of guilt, and the fatal consequences of making bad choices. Their doomed relationship is observed by their young friend, Stingo, who records Sophie’s memories of the war years and the horrible choice she is forced to make that will doom all her future chances of happiness. Sophie’s Choice is the story of a concentration camp survivor named Sophie and her emotionally volatile lover, Nathan. The tone shifts between broad humor and grim reminiscence but generally conforms to the tragic nature of the material described. It contains semiautobiographical material related to Styron’s early years in publishing.

The story is told in first-person narration by a young author named Stingo looking back from the perspective of an established writer in 1967. The events in Sophie’s Choice take place in New York during the summer of 1947. By suggesting that the Holocaust was not a uniquely Jewish experience, the book raised the ire of some special interest groups. Sophie’s Choice stirred up a great deal of controversy and was banned in some locations because of its foul language, sexual themes, and treatment of Polish anti-Semitism.

Sophie's Choice by William Styron