First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, Sylvia draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence. Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster.

Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was the author of Going Places, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, and The Men's Club, among other books. FSG will publish his Collected Stories in June to coincide with the reissue of Sylvia.