by Kate Chopin (Author)

The Awakening is a work from the American south at the turn of the century. It follows the central protagonist, Edna Pontellier's, struggle to negotiate love and motherhood. This compelling novel uses, for its time, an innovative combination of realistic narrative and psychological complexity that contributed to the birth of American modernist literature. It was the catalyst to creating a genre that inspired authors such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.