The inspiration for the Oscar winning film of the same name, Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award winner is a modern classic, interweaving the life and the work of Virginia Woolf with a group of characters struggling with conflicting claims of love and duty, hope and despair. The novel evokes Woolf's last moments before her suicide in 1941, then splits into three overlapping stories from different eras: Woolf writes Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; restless housewife Laura Brown compulsively reads the book in 1951; and lesbian publisher Clarissa Vaughan is nearly Mrs. Dalloway come to life in today's New York City.

"With his elliptical evocation of Mrs. Dalloway, he has managed to pay great but quiet tribute—reminding us of the gorgeous, ferocious beauty of what endures."—Boston Globe