From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful so that people will look at her so that her world will be different.  This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfilment.

Because of its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfilment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrisons's most powerful, unforgettable novels - and a significant work of American fiction.